It was an audacious move for the relatively green label chief - only a year earlier, fellow San Franciscans the Jefferson Airplane made headlines for scoring an RCA advance worth just $25,000.įor Joplin, a major-label contract was the culmination of a lifelong dream, and she wanted to show Davis her own unique brand of gratitude. After some legal wrangling, and the appointment of impresario Albert Grossman as the band’s manager, Davis sent Mainstream packing with a check for $200,000. He wanted to sign them immediately, and the fact that they were already committed to the independent Mainstream Records imprint was of little concern. Joplin offered to sleep with Clive Davis to seal the deal on their CBS recording contract.Ĭlive Davis had just begun his tenure as the head of CBS Records when he fell hard and fast for Big Brother and the Holding Company following their performance at Monterey. A month later, Joplin and Big Brother parted ways for good.Ĭheap Thrills is a showcase for the band at its best, stocked almost exclusively with its most beloved songs, including “Combination of the Two,” “Ball and Chain,” and “Piece of My Heart.” On the album’s 50th anniversary, here are 10 facts you might not know about its creation.ġ. A week after its release, police would beat up demonstrators at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention. Joplin’s mournful version of Gershwin’s “Summertime” seems only to underscore the shift in mood from the Summer of Love to the Summer of Violence that greeted the album. To say Cheap Thrills is inauthentic would be false, but there’s a premature melancholy to the production, as though it were a Gatsby-esque exercise in re-creating good times that had already passed. Presented as a document culled from wild, spontaneous San Francisco nights, it was actually crafted in a studio run by one of the largest record manufacturers on the planet. Yet it also reflects the commodification of the fading hippie dream. Issued on August 12th, 1968, Cheap Thrills is undeniably a masterpiece of the psychedelic age, a set of top-shelf electric soul. But during its brief big-league run, Big Brother assembled their first and only true artistic statement for a global audience. Within a year, the searing spotlight trained on Joplin would cause the band to come unglued. For Big Brother, their trajectory would become the quintessential overnight success gone awry. Monterey was a gold rush for the recording industry, and major labels flocked to stake out their claim. Joplin herself would describe the weekend as “one of the highest points of my life.” The lonely and misunderstood young woman from Texas proudly wrapped herself in her newfound fame - a substitute for the love she was denied during her lonely and painful adolescence. from San Francisco scenesters to cultural giants. But all that early history was eclipsed after they took the stage at the Monterey Pop Festival in June for a pair of performances that transformed Janis Joplin & Co. They had gigs, fans and even a full-length record ready for release. Big Brother and the Holding Company were a band before the summer of 1967.
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