Big Brother & The Holding Company to Reissue Major Label Debut Under Original Title Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills on 50th Anniversary of Janis Joplin’s Final Album with the Band

The mystique surrounding Janis Joplin is one that will never fade away. The lovely lady who performed at Woodstock and at one time lived just two miles away from the Grateful Dead, died of a heroin overdose at age 27.

Columbia/Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Big Brother & The Holding Company’s major label debut with the premiere release of Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills on Friday, November 30.

Released at last under its original title (nixed by the label as too controversial a half century ago), Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills restores the band’s vision and intent in an essential new collection of 30 rare performances including 29 studio outtakes (25 previously unreleased) from the 1968 sessions that generated Big Brother & The Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills, the breakout album that introduced Janis Joplin to the world.

Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills includes liner notes penned especially for this commemorative release by Jefferson Airplane front-woman Grace Slick and Big Brother & The Holding Company drummer David Getz. “Then I heard that voice,” writes Slick. “Good Lord–spontaneous explosions of every emotion–no holds barred…. Janis had no trouble sliding from the apron clad fifties into the no bra sixties.”

In an interview from the Festival Express in July 1970 – Joplin states, “I’m a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything … It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned to make that feeling work for me. I’m full of emotion and I want a release, and if you’re on stage and if it’s really working and you’ve got the audience with you, it’s a oneness you feel.”

Joplin was born in 1943, nicknamed as “Pearl” and grew up in Port Arthur, Texas. A tough woman, she suffered from acne and being overweight while in high school. She was teased and bullied, yet rose above the torment by  reinventing herself as a stylish woman and later becoming a legendary icon.

Joplin rose to fame after her performance as lead singer at Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. In 1963, she hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco where she lived for two years, although she developed a strong addiction to drugs and ended up back home in Texas weighing a mere 88 pounds. She spent a couple years at home, cleaned herself up,  enrolled in college, changed her style and was committed to laying off drugs and alcohol… for awhile at least.

In 1966, Joplin’s bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the hippie community in Haight Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms a promoter who had known her in Texas and who at the time was managing Big Brother. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco.

Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the “Avalon Ballroom” in San Francisco.

BIG BROTHER & The Holding Company

SEX, DOPE & CHEAP THRILLS 2CD Edition

Disc One

1. Combination Of The Two (Take 3)
2. I Need A Man To Love (Take 4)
3. Summertime (Take 2) *
4. Piece Of My Heart (Take 6)
5. Harry (Take 10)
6. Turtle Blues (Take 4)
7. Oh, Sweet Mary
8. Ball And Chain (live, The Winterland Ballroom, April 12, 1968)
9. Roadblock (Take 1) *
10. Catch Me Daddy (Take 1)
11. It’s A Deal (Take 1) *
12. Easy Once You Know How (Take 1) *
13. How Many Times Blues Jam
14. Farewell Song (Take 7)

Disc Two

1. Flower In The Sun (Take 3)
2. Oh Sweet Mary
3. Summertime (Take 1)
4. Piece of My Heart (Take 4)
5. Catch Me Daddy (Take 9)
6. Catch Me Daddy (Take 10)
7. I Need A Man To Love (Take 3)
8. Harry (Take 9)
9. Farewell Song (Take 4)
10. Misery’n (Takes 2 & 3)
11. Misery’n (Take 4)
12. Magic Of Love (Take 1) *
13. Turtle Blues (Take 9)
14. Turtle Blues (last verse Takes 1-3)
15. Piece Of My Heart (Take 3)
16. Farewell Song (Take 5)

Big Brother & The Holding Company

Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills  2LP edition

LP 1

Side A

1. Combination of The Two (Demo)
2. I Need A Man To Love (Take 3)
3. Summertime (Take 2) *
4. Piece Of My Heart (Take 6)

Side B

1. Harry (Take 10)
2. Turtle Blues (Take 4)
3. Oh, Sweet Mary
4. Ball And Chain (live, The Winterland Ballroom, April 12, 1968)

LP 2

Side C

1. Roadblock (Take 1) *
2. Magic Of Love (Take 1) *
3. Oh Sweet Mary
4. Flower In The Sun (Take 3)

Side D

1. Catch Me Daddy (Take 1)
2. Turtle Blues (Take 9)
3. How Many Times Blues Jam
4. Farewell Song (Take 5)

Photo credit: Don Hunstein