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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.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. She spins gospel with soul, flexes a bluesy muscle on sturdy rockers, and gives her big voice a workout on everything from country to R&B.Īll these years later, it still sounds like a new beginning. All these years later, it remains her triumph.įreed from the shackles that somewhat held her back with Big Brother and the Holding Company (a band not nearly as powerful as its singer) and on I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (where outside expectations prevented her from declaring too much independence), Joplin soars on Pearl. 1 for two weeks), "Mercedes Benz," "Trust Me" and the closing "Get It While You Can" (which was released as a single in September) – are among Joplin's all-time best. The finished songs - including the opening "Move Over" (the only song on Pearl for which Joplin received a sole writing credit), "Cry Baby" (which just missed the Top 40 when released as a single in May), "Half Moon," "Me and Bobby McGee" (which reached No. A 10th song, "Buried Alive in the Blues," was a Full Tilt instrumental that Joplin never got around to recording a vocal for. Three days later she was dead at the age of 27.īy the end of 1970, nine tracks with Joplin vocals were chosen for the album. It would be the last number she ever recorded. 1, she laid down an a cappella take of "Mercedes Benz," a song she co-wrote. Within a month, they had almost a dozen songs recorded, all approved by Joplin. Sessions for the album began in Los Angeles in early September 1970, with Doors producer Paul Rothchild behind the boards. Listen to Janis Joplin's 'Me and Bobby McGee' More suited to Joplin's natural sound – bluesy, soulful, twangy – and made up of Canadian musicians headed by session guitarist John Till, Full Tilt seemed like a perfect fit for Joplin, whose out-sized stage presence often overshadowed her collaborators. She again worked with a new group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, which accompanied her on a summer concert tour and during several promotional appearances, like her memorable stops on The Dick Cavett Show. By the next year, when she started putting together the songs that would end up on Pearl, she had a more clear vision. But it's also a bit tentative, as if Joplin wasn't quite sure which direction she wanted to head now that she was calling the shots. It's a solid record, firmly rooted in the blues and R&B Joplin sang with Big Brother. ![]() ![]() Less than a year later, she released her solo debut, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, with a bunch of studio vets, which she named the Kozmic Blues Band, helping out. In December 1968, the Texas-born Joplin left the San Francisco-based Big Brother after two psychedelic blues albums and a few months after Cheap Thrills hit No.
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