Big Brother and the Holding Company are an American rock band that was formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After some initial personnel changes, the band became well known with the lineup of vocalist Janis Joplin, guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley, bassist Peter Albin, and drummer Dave Getz. Their second album Cheap Thrills, released in 1968, is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the Billboard charts, and was ranked number 338 in Rolling Stones the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Joplin left the band in 1968, following the recording of Cheap Thrills, for a successful solo career. The band recruited as new members Nick Gravenites, Kathi McDonald, and Dave Schallock to replace her, and released two more albums before breaking up in 1972. The classic lineup (minus Joplin, who had died in 1970) reunited in 1987. The band has continued to perform ever since, with a variety of different lead singers including Michel Bastian who was one of the earliest female vocalists that replaced Janis Joplin. She sang with Big Brother and The Holding Company from 1987 through 1996. James Gurley left for a solo career in 1997 and died in 2009. Sam Andrew died in 2015.
History Roots in San Francisco Peter Albin was a country and blues guitarist who had played with future Grateful Dead's founders Jerry Garcia and Ron McKernan. Albin met Sam Andrew, a professional rock guitarist with a jazz and classical background. After playing together at Albin's home, Andrew suggested they could form a band. The pair approached guitarist James Gurley, and the resulting trio played open jam sessions hosted by entrepreneur Chet Helms in 1965. Helms found them a drummer, Chuck Jones, and "Big Brother and the Holding Company" was formed at their first gig, the Trips Festival in January 1966. The audience included painter and jazz drummer David Getz, who soon replaced Jones.
Big Brother went on to become the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, playing a progressive style of instrumental rock. Feeling a need for a strong vocalist, Helms dispatched his friend Travis Rivers to Austin, Texas to invite Helms’ longtime friend Janis Joplin to join Big Brother. She was considering joining The 13th Floor Elevators to work with Roky Erickson; that band that was based in Austin. Instead, she traveled with Rivers from Austin to San Francisco and debuted with Big Brother at the Avalon on June 10, 1966.
Janis Joplin Joplin sang for the first time with Big Brother in 1966. Years later, Andrew described the band's first impressions of her:
It took a while for some of the band's followers to accept the new singer, whose musical style differed from the experimental and unconventional sound that Big Brother played at the time. With the addition of Joplin, they became more disciplined musicians, their songs adopted a more traditional structure, and the band started to increase its popularity in the San Francisco psychedelic scene.
Mainstream Records debut In September 1966, the band was stranded in Chicago after finishing a gig at a venue called Mother Blues located on Wells Street. The venue's owner paid them for two weeks' worth of concerts but it was not enough to buy plane tickets back to San Francisco. While there, Big Brother signed a contract with Mainstream Records and attempted to record four songs for a debut album eventually released as Big Brother & the Holding Company, although these initial sessions proved unsatisfactory. When they returned to California in October two songs were recorded in Los Angeles, while the remainder of the record was recorded there from December 12–14, produced by Mainstream's owner Bob Shad. Mainstream was known for its jazz records, and Big Brother was the first rock band to appear on the label. This may have influenced the final result, since the album sounded very different from what the band expected: the acid-rock guitar distortion and lengthy jams typical of their stage act were completely absent, replaced by clean, low-key instrumental tones and tight, two minute song lengths.
"Blind Man" b/w "All Is Loneliness", both from the early sessions in Los Angeles, became the group's first single in October 1966. It was popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, but did not garner any national attention. A second single, "Down on Me" b/w "Call On Me" was released in March 1967, with "Bye Bye Baby" following along with the album in August after the band's national success at the Monterey Pop Festival. The album debuted on Billboard charts on September 2, 1967, peaking at No. 60. It stayed on the charts for a total of 30 weeks.
The Pop Chronicles criticized the record as difficult to find and "technically disappointing". "Down On Me" had a long gestation in the marketplace and finally debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on August 31, 1968, peaking at No. 43. It stayed on the charts for 8 weeks. Other singles from the album were released through the end of 1967 and in 1968. "Coo Coo" b/w "The Last Time", was released in January, 1968.Cash Box January 13, 1968, p. 18 These last songs were from the original 1966 album sessions, but were not included on the LP until Columbia acquired all of the band's Mainstream recordings and reissued the album in the 1970s.Joplin, Laura (2005-08-16). Love, Janis. HarperCollins. .Big Brother and The Holding Co. 1999 CD reissue booklet, with notes by Sam Andrew.
In the summer of 1966, the band members moved to Lagunitas, in Marin County, California, to a house that had been originally built by the ethnologist Clinton Hart Merriam. They lived in there until the beginning of 1967 at which time they put an ad in the San Francisco Oracle with the apparent intention of moving back to the "City". The ad read: "Big Brother is returning to the city. Need rehearsal hall and a place to live. Write to B.B.& the H.C. at Box 94 Lagunitas."The Oracle vol. 1 no. 6 On October 6 they performed a set at the Love Pageant Rally, the first outdoor Haight-Ashbury festival held on the same day LSD was made illegal in California.
Mantra-Rock Dance
One of the band's earliest major performances in 1967 was the Mantra-Rock Dance—a musical event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Big Brother and Janis Joplin performed there along with Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple.
Monterey Pop Festival The band's historic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 attracted national and international attention. The band was scheduled to play on Saturday afternoon, with a set which included "Down on Me", "Combination of The Two", "Harry", "Roadblock" and "Ball and Chain". However, the band's manager decided not to allow Pennebaker's film crew to film and record them without paying them, and ordered the crew to turn its cameras off. The festival promoters thought the band performance was great, and asked them to play again the next evening in order to record it on film, but they played only two songs: "Combination of The Two" and "Ball and Chain". "I remember being amazed that this white woman was singing like Bessie Smith," said Michelle Phillips once. "I was astounded". They signed a contract with Columbia Records, which was able to buy out their contract from Mainstream. In late November, Albert Grossman, who was then managing Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary and several other acts became their manager.Rolling Stone, The Fortieth Anniversary Special Edition, Issue 1030/1031, July 12–26, 2007.
National success Having received national recognition after the Monterey Pop Festival, Big Brother was booked by Grossman for engagements around the country. One of those engagements was for opening night at Chet Helms’ The Family Dog Denver on September 8–9, 1967 along with Blue Cheer. A well-known band on the West Coast (especially in San Francisco), Big Brother played their first East Coast concert in New York City on February 17, 1968, at the Anderson Theater, 66 Second Avenue. Columbia's marketing department featured Janis Joplin as the star; before that time, some of the band's audience regarded James Gurley as of equal or more importance. In New York the press criticized the band for playing out of tune and for amplifiers set at maximum volume. The Village Voice, while noting that “ears came out ringing” after the Saturday night performance, cited Joplin as ranking in sex appeal with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, and praised “her belting, groovy style,” mixing Bessie Smith, Aretha Franklin and James Brown. “At times she seemed to be singing harmony with herself.” Big Brother was the first band to play in the legendary Fillmore East, in New York City, on March 8, 1968. The other acts that night were Albert King and Tim Buckley.Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. Crown Publishing Group. .
Cheap Thrills
The band's first album for Columbia was due to be recorded during the spring and summer of 1968, and released in August of that year. It was eagerly anticipated after the first LP had been largely ignored. Initially planned as a live album, the band recorded two concerts at Grande Ballroom in Detroit, but the results did not satisfy the producer John Simon nor the manager Albert Grossman.
The live album was scrapped and Columbia decided to re-record most of the songs in the studio ("Down on Me" and "Piece of My Heart", taken from the Grande Ballroom concerts, were later released as part of Joplin's live album In Concert in 1972). However, it was difficult adapting their raw sound and unorthodox work habits with the realities of a professional studio. The progress was slow, and the pressure from Grossman, Columbia, and the press increased. A few of the band members believed that John Simon should not be the producer, believing that he came from a different musical style and did not understand the band's psychedelic, guitar based sound.
The album was initially named Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills, but Columbia asked them to shorten it to just Cheap Thrills. For the album cover the band was photographed by Richard Avedon but the pictures were not used. Also rejected was a photo of the band naked in a hotel room bed. Dave Getz suggested that the band hire underground comic-book artist R. Crumb whom he knew through a mutual friend. What was originally meant to be the back cover art became the classic cover of the album. For the back cover, Columbia chose a black and white photo of Joplin.
"Ball and Chain" is the only song on the album recorded entirely live, and even though the cover credits assert that the live material was recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, it was actually taken from a concert in Winterland Ballroom in 1968, the same version that appears on the album Live at Winterland '68, released in 1998. (The performance of "Ball and Chain" as released on the Winterland album features a different opening guitar solo by Gurley, indicating that he had dubbed a different intro for the Cheap Thrills issue.)