Janis Joplin links The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making the material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco's Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s. With both Big Brother and solo, she did much to redefine the role of women in rock with an assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying onstage presence. She died in 1970. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see Janis Joplin's Rockwalk Plaque.