Songfacts®:

• Joe McDonald wrote this song for Janis Joplin when they were living together in 1967. According to Joe, she was upset with him for breaking up with her to be with Robin Menken, whom he subsequently married, but asked him to write a song for her, and this was the song. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Keely - Florida
• This was backed with an instrumental version.
• This was the second song written in honor of a female musician to be included on a Country Joe & the Fish album. The first was "Grace" from their debut, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, inspired by Jefferson Airplane's vocalist Grace Slick.
• McDonald was on location in Chile producing music for a movie in 1970 when he got word that Janis died from a heroin overdose. In the small town of Copiapo, hundreds of copper miners and their families gathered to shoot a political rally scene and McDonald was asked to entertain the crowd. He chose the song "Janis." The meaning was lost on most of the audience, who didn't speak English, except for two impromptu guests. The singer recalled on his website:
  
  "So in memory of her that day I sang that song to those people in the little square. As I was singing a young man and woman who had driven all the way from Berkeley, California in a Volkswagen van pulled into the town. They got out and in an LSD fog walked over to one of the film crew and asked 'what's going on?' They were told and looked up and saw me singing the song for Janis. They had seen me many times in Berkeley singing the song. They were amazed at the timing of it all. They got back in their van and drove off."