Big Brother and the Holding Company was a rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965. They were one of the key bands of the Bay Area music scene during the mid sixties, although they are best known for the period when they featured Janis Joplin as their lead singer. The band was first featured at the Trips Festival, a large scale "Acid Test" promoted by Ken Kesey with the Merry Pranksters. Big Brother was one of the multimedia highlights of the festival at Longshoreman's Hall that was staged with films, product booths, light shows and local music acts in January 1966. Their 1968 album Cheap Thrills with Joplin is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco.
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.
Joplin sang for the first time with Big Brother in 1966. Years later, guitarist Sam Andrew described the band's first impressions of her:
We were the established rock and roll band. We were heavy. We were like: all right, out of three or four bands in this city, we are one of them. We're in the newspapers all the time. We're working out. We are doing this woman a favor to even let her come and sing with us. She came in and she was dressed like a little Texan. She didn't look like a hippie, she looked like my mother, who is also from Texas. She sang real well but it wasn't like, "Oh we're bowled over." It was probably more like, our sound was really loud. It was probably bowling her over. I am sure we didn't turn down enough for her. She wrote letters home about how exotic all of us were. The names of the bands. That kind of thing. In other words, we weren't flattened by her and she wasn't flattened by us. It was probably a pretty equal meeting. She was a real intelligent, Janis was, and she always rose to the occasion. She sang the songs. It wasn't like this moment of revelation like you would like it to be. Like in a movie or something. It wasn't like, "Oh my God, now we have gone to heaven. We have got Janis Joplin." I mean she was good but she had to learn how to do that. It took her about a year to really learn how to sing with an electric band.
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 September 2, 1967, 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 August 31, 1968, peaking at #43. Other singles from the album were released through the end of 1967 and 1968.
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. The Big Brother and Janis Joplin performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple.
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 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 a short version of "Ball and Chain" (without James Gurley's guitar solo). "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 that November, and Albert Grossman became their manager.
Discography
Big Brother & the Holding Company (1967)
Cheap Thrills (1968)
Be a Brother (1970)
How Hard It Is (1971)
References
^ [1] ^ Interview with Sam Andrew from Big Brother & The Holding Company | Cincy Groove Magazine ^ Brant, Marley (2008). Join Together: Forty Years of the Rock Music Festival. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 16. ^ Sinclair, Mick (2004). San Francisco: a cultural and literary history. Interlink Books. p. 204. ^ "Chronology". janisjoplin.net. 1998-2010. Retrieved 10 June 2010. ^ Big Brother & The Holding Co ^ Joplin, Laura (2005-08-16). Love, Janis. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060755229. ^ Show 41 - The Acid Test: Psychedelics and a sub-culture emerge in San Francisco. [Part 1] : UNT Digital Library ^ Joplin, Laura (2005-08-16). Love, Janis. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-075522-9. ^ Big Brother and The Holding Co. 1999 CD reissue booklet, with notes by Sam Andrew. ^ Bromley, David G.; Shinn, Larry D. (1989), Krishna consciousness in the West, Bucknell University Press, p. 106, ISBN 9780838751442 ^ Chryssides, George D.; Wilkins, Margaret Z. (2006), A reader in new religious movements, Continuum International Publishing Group, p. 213, ISBN 9780826461681 ^ Joplin, Laura (1992), "Love, Janis", University of Michigan (Villard Books): p. 182, ISBN 9780679416050 ^ Rolling Stone, The Fortieth Anniversary Special Edition, Issue 1030/1031.>>July 12–26, 2007. ^ Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 0-517-58650-9. ^ "CATCHING THE ENERGY. John Simon Records Big Brother, 1968" - NY Daily News ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000007TSP Myra Friedman, Janis’ biographer, album review to Amazon.com ^ Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd. p. 236. ISBN 0-214-20512-6. ^ http://www.officialjanis.com/b_albums_boxofpearls.html ^ http://www.officialjanis.com/b_albums_janiscd2.html ^ Janis Joplin - Unofficial Discography ^ http://www.officialjanis.com/dates_1968.html
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