Roots in San Francisco Leader Peter Albin, a country and blues guitarist who had played with future
Grateful Dead's founders
Jerry Garcia and
Ron McKernan, 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. In the audience there was 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 contacted
Janis Joplin, who at the time was considering joining up with
Roky Erickson of
The 13th Floor Elevators. She traveled to San Francisco from
Austin, Texas 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. 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. 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." 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 poster featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company 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.
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 Helm's
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.
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. 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.) The LP was released in August 1968, one year after their debut album, and reached number one on the Billboard charts in its eighth week in October. It held the number one spot for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks, and the single "Piece of My Heart" also became a huge hit. By the end of the year it was one of the most successful albums of 1968. It was certified
gold by the
R.I.A.A. on October 15 that year for $1 million worth of sales, with subsequent sales pushing the total over a million units. Even though the album was released with only seven songs, the other eight songs which were not included were released on subsequent albums. "Catch Me Daddy" and "Farewell Song" were among their most popular songs. These plus "Magic of Love", a medley of "
Amazing Grace" and "Hi-Heel Sneakers", and an outtake of "Harry" first appeared on
Farewell Song, a posthumous Joplin release in 1981; they also appeared on the three-CD set
Janis in 1993. "It's a Deal" and "Easy Once you Know How" were released in
Box of Pearls in 1999. "Flower in The Sun" and "Roadblock" were released on the
Cheap Thrills reissue CD as bonus tracks. "Piece of My Heart" would be reissued on a single in the Columbia Hall of Fame oldies series - backed by the title cut from Joplin's first 1969 solo album, ''
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!''.
Split with Joplin At the end of the summer of 1968, just after the release of
Cheap Thrills, Joplin announced that she was leaving Big Brother in the fall of that year. The official reason given was her desire to go solo and form a
soul music band. Andrew also planned to leave the band to join Joplin in her new project. It included an October 20 concert at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia. Their final concert was in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. It was a benefit for the production company known as the Family Dog whose members included Chet Helms, the band's manager from two years earlier. Three weeks after this benefit concert, Joplin and Andrew played in Memphis for the first time with her new band, later called Kozmic Blues Band.
1969–1972 After Joplin and Sam Andrew left Big Brother, Dave Getz and Peter Albin joined
Country Joe and the Fish and toured the U.S. and Europe and played on the Country Joe album
Here We Are Again (Vanguard Records 1969). He was replaced by
Tom Finch. Big Brother did not have a fixed lead singer until 2011; Michel Bastian, Lisa Battle, Halley DeVestern, Lisa Mills,
Jane Kitto (Aus), Andra Mitrovich,
Kacee Clanton, Sophia Ramos,
Mary Bridget Davies,
Duffy Bishop, Lana Spence,
Chloe Lowery, Jane Myrenget, Lynn Asher, Kate Russo Thompson,
Darby Gould,
Maria Stanford, Jeri Verdi, and
Superfly's Shiho Ochi were among the singers that have played in concerts with them.
Cathy Richardson became the band's official lead singer in 2011, with Ben Nieves having replaced Finch as guitarist in 2008. Other guitarists performed and toured with Big Brother including Chad Quist, Joel Hoekstra, and even Kate Russo Thompson on electric violin as 2nd guitarist. In 1999 the band released the album
Do What You Love, with Lisa Battle as the lead singer. The album contains some new versions of songs like "Women is Loser". They recorded the live album
Hold Me, with Sophia Ramos on lead vocals and Chad Quist on guitar, in Germany in 2005, and released it in 2006. In 2008 they released the two-CD set
The Lost Tapes, with songs recorded at concerts between 1966 and 1967 in San Francisco, and featuring Janis Joplin as lead singer. Some songs had already been unofficial releases, but there are 12 never-before-released songs. Former guitarist James Gurley died on December 20, 2009, of a heart attack, just two days before his 70th birthday. In October 2016, the band went to Europe for a short tour in the Netherlands, with the following line-up: Dave Getz on drums, Peter Albin on bass, Tom Finch on guitar, Kate Russo on electric violin, keyboards and vocals, and Eileen Humphreys on lead vocals. Venues included the North Sea Jazz Club in Amsterdam, De Bosuil in Weert, Het Paard in The Hague and Luxor Live in Arnhem. "Big Brother And The Holding Co Live In The Lowlands" was released in 2017 on DVD and CD by Marista Records featuring this lineup in Weert. ==Controversy==