Big Brother And Holding Company Views

General Goods

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 Andrews suggested they form a band.[1] 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 set up the newly formed Big Brother and the Holding Company 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 & the Holding Company is the debut album from Big Brother and the Holding Company and the studio debut of Janis Joplin. The album was originally released in the summer of 1967, following the band's major success at the Monterey Pop Festival. The album was a minor success, peaking at #60 and almost producing a top forty hit with the Joplin song Down on Me . A year after its initial release, Big Brother would release their second album Cheap Thrills which went on to become a massive hit. The Last Time and Coo Coo do not appear on the original Mainstream release; they were added when Columbia Records reissued the album.[2]

Guitarist James Gurley of Big Brother and the Holding Company died Dec. 20 of a heart attack at age 69 in Palm Springs, Calif., band manager Tim Murphy tells the Music Mix. Big Brother, a central act in the legendary San Francisco music scene of the 1960s, will always be remembered primarily as the band that launched Janis Joplin