Janis Joplin: The Untold Legacy explores the real moments behind one of rock history's most powerful voices.

In July 1970, Janis Joplin canceled a $15,000 concert in Hawaii and flew to Texas — for the birthday party of Kenneth Threadgill, the former bootlegger who ran a converted gas station in Austin.

In 1962, that gas station gave 19-year-old Janis her first real stage. The hat passed through the Wednesday-night crowd held the first money her voice ever earned. Threadgill once offered her free beer NOT to sing — because he didn't want to follow her on the microphone.

At the 1970 jubilee, a crowd of 500 became 5,000. She placed a Hawaiian lei around his neck. She sang a song she had never recorded — Me and Bobby McGee — and predicted its writer, Kris Kristofferson, would be famous within a year.

She promised Threadgill a record deal. Three months later, she was dead.

In 1972, Kristofferson heard Threadgill yodel, flew him to Nashville, and paid for his first recording sessions — using royalties from Me and Bobby McGee. Her promise was kept by her song.

Threadgill was honored in the Congressional Record as the Father of Austin Country Music. He died in 1987. The old gas station still stands on North Lamar.

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