33. JANIS JOPLIN
The Texas-size chip on her shoulder that Joplin carried from Port Arthur to Austin to San Francisco pulsates throughout her breakthrough performance of “Ball and Chain” at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. She contorts and stomps and wails, possessed by the forces animating Big Mama Thornton’s love-as-prison metaphor but never surrendering control over the song. Joplin’s volatile stage attitude weaponized her vulnerability and more or less set the bar for female rock singers.
Most Texas musical moment: That live “Ball and Chain.”