Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Who Didn't Survive the '60s

1970 was the last year of the 'sixties, and these three died in September and October.

Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson of Canned Heat.  Date of death: 2 September 1970.  Cause: "acute accidental barbituate intoxication."  I saw him live with Canned Heat in 1968 in a club named  Kaleidoscope on Sunset Boulevard  in Hollywood.  Wilson's high-pitched voice drew jeers from some members of the audience.  On the Road Again.  Going Up the Country.  On the bill with them when I saw them at the Kaleidoscope was an obscure psychedelic band name of "Fever Tree."  They were damned good as witness The Sun Also Rises and San Francisco Girls and Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing.

Jimi Hendrix.  Date of death:  18 September 1970.  Cause: unclear.  In '67 I heard him play The Wind Cries Mary at the Monterey Pop Festival. Third Stone from the Sun.

Janis Joplin. Date of Death: 4 October 1970.  Cause: heroin overdose. She was at Monterey too.  My favorite  is her rendition of Kris Krisofferson's Me and Bobby McGee.  Otherwise, I didn't much like her vocal stylings: too screechy and screamy.  Dead 42 years, she's been dead longer than she lived.