Big Brother and The Holding Co.

Big Brother and The Holding Co. biography

Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that 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. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their lead singer. Their 1968 album Cheap Thrills 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 Stone 's the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Leader Peter Albin, a country-blues guitarist who had played with future founders of the Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia and Ron McKernan, met Sam Andrew, a professional rock & roll guitarist with a jazz and classical background. After playing together at Albin's home, Andrew suggested they form a band. The pair approached guitarist James Gurley, the resulting threesome playing 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. In the audience was painter and jazz drummer David Getz, who soon displaced 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 contacted Janis Joplin in Austin, Texas, who at the time was considering joining up with Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators. She traveled to San Francisco and debuted with the band at the Avalon on June 10, 1966.

Janis Joplin

Joplin sang for the first time with Big Brother in 1966. Years later, guitarist Sam 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. Her music was completely different from that which Big Brother was playing at that time. Big Brother had a very experimental and non-conventional sound, but with Janis, they became more conventional musicians, their songs adopted a more conventional structure, and the band started to increase its popularity in the underground San Francisco psychedelic scene.

At the end of 1966, Big Brother signed a contract with Mainstream Records. They recorded all the songs for the album Big Brother & the Holding Company for Mainstream at a studio in Chicago in three days; December 12 through 14th. Mainstream was known for its jazz records, and Big Brother was the first rock band to work with them. This may have influenced the final result, since the album sounded very different from what the band expected: acoustic and folk instead of heavy acid rock. The first single released was "Blind Man" b/w "All Is Loneliness," both from the album sessions, in July 1967. It was popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, but did not garner much national attention. A second single, "Down On Me" b/w "Call On Me" was released along with their self-titled debut album in the August 1967, following the band's national success after the Monterey Pop Festival. The album debuted on Billboard charts on 9/2/67, peaking at #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 8/31/68, peaking at #43. It stayed on the charts for 8 weeks. Other singles from the album were released through the end of 1967 and 1968. One final Mainstream single, "Coo Coo" b/w "The Last Time," was released after the band's second album came out on Columbia Records, in Nov. 1968. These last songs were from the original album sessions, but were not included on the album until Columbia Records bought the rights to all the Mainstream material and reissued the LP in the 1970s.

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