Janis Joplin (19)

Janis Joplin
1943–1970
Southern Comfort–soaked blues shouter
Cause of Death: Heroin overdose
Pearl Jams: The tortured 28-year-old was still working on her solo debut, Pearl, when she OD'd in Hollywood's Landmark Hotel. Her will left her estate to her family and $2,500 for her friends to "have a ball." Released four months later, Pearl topped the charts for nine weeks and yielded her biggest hit, the No. 1 single "Me and Bobby McGee." Since Joplin’s death, her music has been remastered and collected on numerous greatest-hits collections and a couple of box sets; she received a Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy in 2005.
The Show Must Go On: Two biopics are currently in production. One has Pink as Janis; the other, more improbably, stars Renée Zelwegger.
Like the ’60s Never Happened: Joplin's back catalogue is no great money-spinner, but the throwaway anti-consumerism song "Mercedes Benz" was licensed to Mercedes for a 1995 commercial ("A hoot," said Janis's sister). Early last year, Joplin's estate announced plans for The Search for the Pearl, an unappealing-sounding reality TV show casting for a modern Janis along the lines of INXS's Rock Star, but since then things have been quiet.