Big Brother & The Holding Company - Cheap Thrills

One of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco

Sourced from the original master tape; jacket meticulously recreated from the original art

No. 1 on the Billboard charts; No. 338 in Rolling Stones' 500 greatest albums of all time. 

The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist.

One of the most eagerly awaited albums in rock history, Big Brother and the Holding Company's 1968 major label debut — Cheap Thrills (they'd previously released one thinly produced collection on the small Mainstream label) made good on all the hype generated by Janis Joplin's amazing performance at the Monterey Pop Festival the year before. Crowned by its hit single, a churning remake of Aretha Franklin's sister Erma's "Piece of My Heart," the album also contained Joplin's Monterey showstopper, Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," as well as the Gershwin classic "Summertime," on which Joplin's always underappreciated band (especially guitarists Sam Andrews and James Gurley) match her vocal intensity with their own ferocious playing. 

 

1. Combination of the Two

2. I need a Man To Love

3. Summertime

4. Piece of My Heart

5. Turtle Blues

6. Oh, Sweet Mary

7. Ball and Chain

8. Road Block

Be the first to write a review for this item OR just rate it