A Little Piece of Her Heart

 

With many thanks to The Good Old Days 

Her sandals lay kicked off in the corner, and a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort sat beside the mic stand. Midway through a cigarette, Janis Joplin crushed the filter into the studio carpet, stepped up barefoot, and stared into the silence. It was 1968, inside Columbia Records’ Los Angeles studio, and she was about to record “Piece of My Heart” (1967). The band waited. The tape rolled. No one breathed.

Originally recorded by Erma Franklin in 1967, the song had been a restrained, soulful ballad. Janis did not want restraint. She wanted a storm. From the first note, her voice cracked like a whip, brimming with ache, rage, and refusal. Producer John Simon watched through the glass, stunned. This was not a cover. This was a gut-punch.

Janis had heard the song months earlier in San Francisco. Living out of motels and crashing on couches, she had been bouncing between gigs, often showing up with no shoes, no plan, but always a voice that made crowds stop cold. The first time she played the track on a record player, she froze. The lyrics spoke to every bruise she had earned loving people who did not love her back.

Big Brother and the Holding Company hesitated. The song was not psychedelic, had no fuzzed-out solos or explosive structure. It belonged to another world. But Janis insisted. She did not just hear the song, she felt it, bleeding through every word. Guitarists James Gurley and Sam Andrew reworked the arrangement, adding crunch and chaos to match the force she poured into her vocals. The band dropped into the groove, and Janis detonated the song from the inside.

There were no vocal overdubs. What she gave in that first full take was what ended up on the record. She tore through lines like they were arguments with the past, voice soaring, breaking, clawing its way forward. When she screamed “Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!” it sounded like a woman both daring and begging to be destroyed.

The version appeared on the album “Cheap Thrills” (1968), which hit like a tidal wave, spending weeks at the top of the Billboard charts. Drawn by underground comic legend R. Crumb, the album cover became iconic, but the emotional core of the record was buried in that track. Listeners did not just hear Janis, they felt her. The heartbreak was not poetic. It was scorched, real, and unrelenting.

Onstage, the song became a ritual. Janis would stumble to the mic, eyes half-shut, shoulders heaving. She sang like it was the last thing holding her together. Fans screamed the lyrics back at her, some crying, others stunned. Her voice often cracked. She did not care. She was giving everything. Every night.

Click Image for Piece of My Heart