Janis Joplin saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, "Going Down With Janis" (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first
Janis Joplin edition of "The New York Times" carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had cited as a musical influence during many conversations with people. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by