Big Brother & The Holding Company feat. Janis Joplin Big Brother & The Holding Company

• 1 Bye, Bye Baby 02:37
• 2 Easy Rider 02:23
• 3 Intruder 02:27
• 4 Light Is Faster Than Sound 02:30
• 5 Call on Me 02:33
• 6 Coo Coo 01:56
• 7 Women Is Losers 02:03
• 8 Blindman 02:02
• 9 Down on Me 02:04
• 10 Caterpillar 02:18
• 11 All Is Loneliness 02:17
• 12 The Last Time 02:15
• Total Runtime 27:25

Info for Big Brother & The Holding Company feat. Janis Joplin

Six months before becoming an overnight sensation following a blistering set at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, Big Brother was an unknown group from San Francisco playing a month-long Chicago club engagement. The band, made up of bassist Peter Albin, drummer David Getz, and guitarists James Gurley and Sam Andrew, was completed when the quartet was introduced to singer Janis Joplin by mutual friend Chet Helms.

When their gig was cut short, Big Brother avoided returning to California when Bob Shad signed the group to Mainstream Records, his small, struggling jazz label. The three-day recording session in December 1966 resulted in a set of mostly original songs, with the exception of New York City street musician Moondog's 'All Is Loneliness' and a more secular arrangement of the gospel standard 'Down on Me.' Despite Joplin's fiery singing style, Big Brother was still the kind of democracy in which Joplin shared vocals with Sam Andrew on the trippy 'Light Is Faster Than Sound' and the more soulful duet 'Call on Me.' But most of this record featured Joplin reaching back and channeling her hero Big Maybelle on songs like the brassy 'Women Is Losers' and the no-nonsense 'Intruder.'

„The debut, self-titled album from Big Brother & the Holding Company is an evolving paradigm, ten tracks initially issued on Mainstream Records, a label that would have success in 1968 with 'Journey to the Center of the Mind' by Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes. Unfortunately for Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company, the respectable performances and all of the material on this disc are undercut by a weak production that sounds rushed. Recorded on December 12, 13, and 14 of 1966, it's quite telling that perhaps the best two songs from the sessions, Peter Albin's tribal-sounding 'Coo Coo,' and Janis Joplin's fiery 'The Last Time,' were only available on a 45 rpm and played as treats on FM radio 'rare tape' nights. Those two songs have an intensity and drama missing from laid-back album cuts like 'Easy Rider' and 'Intruder.' Big Brother's strength sans Janis was their ability to experiment and rely heavily on ideas to make up for their lack of musical prowess. Sad to say, there is little of that experimentation here. Even a potential science fiction Peter Albin composition, 'Light Is Faster Than Sound,' comes off like an audition tape instead of the hit it could have been had it the cosmic explosion of a 'Journey to the Center of the Mind.' The album does contain interesting studies of future classics, like Moondog's 'All Is Loneliness' (the street poet eventually signing with Columbia himself), and Joplin's creative arrangement of 'Down on Me,' making it more of an entertaining textbook than a deep musical experience. It was the lack of product from superstar Janis Joplin which kept putting an emphasis on this release with little else available to satisfy rabid fans who couldn't get enough Janis. Columbia picked up the album and re-issued it in its original form, then reissued it again with 'The Last Time' and 'Coo Coo' added.“ (Joe Viglione, AMG)

Janis Joplin, vocals
Peter Albin, bass
David Getz, drums
James Gurley, guitar
Sam Andrew, guitar

Produced by Bob Shad

Digitally remastered

Big Brother and the Holding Company
are primarily remembered as the group that gave Janis Joplin her start. There's no denying both that Joplin was by far the band's most striking asset, and that Big Brother would never have made a significant impression if they hadn't been fortunate enough to add her to their lineup shortly after forming. But Big Brother also occupies a significant place in the history of San Francisco psychedelic rock, as one of the bands that best captured the era's loosest, reckless, and indulgent qualities in its high-energy mutations of blues and folk-rock.

Big Brother were formed in 1965 in the Haight-Ashbury; by the time Joplin joined in mid-1966, the lineup was Sam Andrew and James Gurley on guitar, Peter Albin on bass, and David Getz on drums. Joplin, a recent arrival from Texas, entered the band at the instigation of Chet Helms, who (other than Bill Graham) was the most important San Francisco rock promoter. Big Brother, like the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, were not great songwriters or singers. They didn't entirely welcome Joplin's presence at first, though, and Joplin did not dominate the group right away, sharing the lead vocals with other members.

It soon became evident to both band and audience that Joplin's fiery wail — mature and emotionally wrenching, even at that early stage — had to be spotlighted to make Big Brother a contender. But Big Brother weren't superfluous to the effort, interpreting folk and blues with an inventive (if sometimes sloppy) eclecticism that often gave way to distorted guitar jamming, and matching Joplin's passion with a high-spirited, anything-goes ethos of their own.

Big Brother catapulted themselves into national attention with their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, particularly with Joplin's galvanizing interpretation of 'Ball and Chain' (which was a highlight of the film of the event). High-powered management and record label bids rolled in immediately, but unfortunately Big Brother had tied themselves up in a bad contract with the small Mainstream label, at a time when they were stranded on the road and needed cash. Their one Mainstream album (released in 1967) actually isn't bad at all, containing some of their stronger cuts, such as 'Down on Me' and 'Coo Coo.' It didn't fully capture the band's strengths, and with the help of new high-powered manager Albert Grossman (also handler of Bob Dylan, the Band, and Peter, Paul & Mary), they extricated themselves from the Mainstream deal and signed with Columbia.

The one Big Brother album for Columbia that featured Joplin, Cheap Thrills (1968), wasn't completed without problems of its own. John Simon found the band so difficult to work with that he withdrew his production credit from the final LP, which was assembled from both studio sessions and live material (recorded for an aborted concert album). Cheap Thrills nonetheless went to number one when it was finally released, and though it too was an erratic affair, it contained some of the best moments of acid rock's glory days, including 'Ball and Chain,' 'Summertime,' 'Combination of the Two,' and 'Piece of My Heart.'

Cheap Thrills made Big Brother superstars, a designation that was short-lived. By the end of 1968, Joplin had decided to go solo, a move from which neither she nor Big Brother ever fully recovered. That's putting matters too simply: Joplin never found a backing band as sympathetic, but did record some excellent material in the remaining two years of her life. Big Brother, on the other hand, had the wind totally knocked out of their sails. Although they did re-form for a while in the early '70s with different singers (indeed, they continued to perform in watered-down variations into the '90s), nothing would ever be the same.

This album contains no booklet.