Cheap Thrills

by Janis Joplin, Big Brother & the Holding Company

Overview

Cheap Thrills, the major-label debut of Janis Joplin, was one of the most eagerly anticipated, and one of the most successful, albums of 1968. Joplin and her band Big Brother & the Holding Company had earned extensive press notice ever since they played the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, but for a year after that their only recorded work was a poorly produced, self-titled album that they'd done early in their history for Mainstream Records; and it took the band and the best legal minds at Columbia Records seven months to extricate them from their Mainstream contract, so that they could sign with Columbia. All the while, demand continued to build, and they still faced the problem of actually delivering something worthy of the press they'd been getting -- Columbia even tried to record them live on-stage on the tour they were in the midst of when the new contract was signed, but somehow the concert tapes from early March of 1968 didn't capture the full depth of their work. So they spent March, April, and May in the studio with producer John Simon and, miraculously, emerged with something that was as exciting as anything they'd done on-stage. When Cheap Thrills appeared in August 1968 -- sporting a Robert Crumb cover on its gatefold jacket that constituted the most elaborate album design ever lavished on a rock album from Columbia Records, as well as a pop-art classic rivaling the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's jacket -- it shot into the charts, reaching number one and going gold within a couple of months, and "Piece of My Heart" became a Top 40 hit and helped to propel the LP to over a million sales. Joplin, with her ear- (and vocal cord-) shredding voice, was the obvious standout. Nobody had ever heard singing as emotional, as desperate, as determined, or as loud as Joplin's, and Cheap Thrills was her greatest moment. Not that everything was done full out -- there were relatively quiet moments on the album that were as compelling as the high-wattage showcases; her rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime" was the finest rock reinterpretation of a standard done by anybody up to that time (though, in an incident recalled in his autobiography Clive, when Columbia Records president Clive Davis played it to Richard Rodgers to give him an example of some of the sounds that younger audiences of the late '60s were listening to, the 66-year-old Rodgers stomped out of the Columbia corporate offices in fury, vowing never to write another song); and Joplin's own "Turtle Blues" showed that she and the band could turn down and do credible acoustic blues, in something like an authentic period Bessie Smith (or, more properly, Memphis Minnie) sound. Big Brother's backup, typical of the guitar-dominated sound of San Francisco psychedelia, made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in precision. But everybody knew who the real star was, and Joplin played her last gig with Big Brother while the album was still on top of the charts. Neither she nor the band would ever equal it. Heard today, Cheap Thrills is a musical time capsule and remains a showcase for one of rock's most distinctive singers. ~ William Ruhlmann & Bruce Eder

Product Details

Release Date:	11/23/2012
Label:	Legacy / Sony Music
UPC:	0886919479911

Tracks

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 & Chain

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Big Brother & the Holding Company   Primary Artist
Janis Joplin   Primary Artist,Vocals,Featured Artist
James Gurley   Bass,Guitar
Peter Albin   Bass,Guitar
Sam Andrew   Bass,Guitar,Vocals
David Getz   Drums,Piano
John Simon   Piano

Technical Credits

Steven Berkowitz   A&R
Bert Russell   Composer
Bob Irwin   Producer,Reissue Producer
John Byrne Cooke   Liner Notes
James Gurley   Composer,Engineer
Elliot Mazer   Mixing,Producer,Assistant Producer
Fred Catero   Engineer
Janis Joplin   Composer,Engineer,Performer
George Gershwin   Composer
Ira Gershwin   Composer
DuBose Heyward   Composer
Diana Reid Haig   Mixing,Digital Editing
Peter Albin   Composer
Sam Andrew   Arranger,Composer
Jerry Hochman   Engineer
Jerry Ragovoy   Composer
Roy Segal   Engineer
David Diller   Engineer
Willie Mae Thornton   Composer
David Getz   Composer
John Simon   Producer
South Side Slim   Composer
Bert Berns   Composer
Big Brother & the Holding Company   Performer
Big Mama Thornton   Composer
Vic Anesini   Mixing,Mastering
Mark Feldman   Project Director
Mark Spoelstra   Composer
Patti Matheny   A&R
Jen Wyler   Editing,Assembly,Authoring,Mastering
Elliott Landy   Tray Photo,Photography
Robert Crumb   Artwork,Illustrations
Smay Vision   Art Direction
Nicholas Bennett   Packaging Manager
David Gahr   Photography
Baron Wolman   Back Cover,Photography
Dorothy Heyward   Composer
Nathan Rosenberg   Digital Editing
Jim Marshall   Photography