55 Years Ago: Big Brother and the Holding Company Release Debut LP

By editorial board on August 21, 2022

In September 1966, the San Francisco band - which included guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley, bassist Peter Albin, drummer Dave Getz and singer Janis Joplin - found themselves stranded in Chicago.

For many aspiring rock bands, signing a record deal is a dream come true. For Big Brother & the Holding Company, it was more a matter of fiscal necessity. (UCR)

Even though they were paid for some performances at Mother Blues, there wasn't enough money for plane tickets back to California. Bob Shad of the California-based independent record label Mainstream Records offered a solution: Sign a contract to make the money.

The album was released on August 12, 1968.

Up until that point, Mainstream produced jazz albums. Big Brother & the Holding Company would be the label's first rock act.

Looking back, it was a rushed decision, but, as Albin recalled to Relix in 1992, the band was eager to keep Joplin as their lead singer. "We thought that it might lock Janis into the group a little bit better," he said. "[But] it was definitely a mistake. It cost us a lot of money. We never got paid any of the revenues from that record."

It had been only eight months since the band's debut performance together at the Trips Festival in January 1966. And Joplin still hadn't fully developed her big voice. "We weren't flattened by her, and she wasn't flattened by us," Andrew said in a later interview.

"It was probably a pretty equal meeting. She was 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."

"I'm not really a songwriter," she said in a 1968 interview. "When I write a tune, it's just about the way I feel. My songs sort of sound the same after awhile. ... I can only write about the inside of Janis Joplin, that's the only thing I can write about."

 

 

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