Big Brother & the Holding Company, "Big Brother & the Holding Company" (Mainstream, 1967)

When she died in 1970 at age 27, Janis Joplin had only three albums to her credit, and two of those were as a member of the San Francisco-based band Big Brother & the Holding Company.

The second Big Brother album, "Cheap Thrills," was one of the most anticipated releases of 1968 and hit No. 1 in short order, while a single, the incendiary "Piece of My Heart," climbed to No. 16. Coupled with the release of D.A. Pennebaker's "Monterey Pop" film that year, with Janis shrieking her way through Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," the singer from Texas shot up the ranks of superstardom.

Her vinyl debut came a year earlier with "Big Brother & the Holding Company," an album the band recorded in late 1966. The story of its creation is one of those bittersweet chapters in Joplin's short life: The band traveled to Chicago to play what was supposed to be a monthlong engagement at a nightclub called Mother Blues, but the gigs failed to draw and the club went under. A Chicagoan named Bob Shad, who owned a small record company, offered the band a recording contract, the fairness of which has been questioned frequently in the ensuing decades.

The result is an album that sounds, for the most part, like something that wasn't recorded in a state-of-the-art studio by anyone who had a clue about how to work with a rock band. Elements that made Big Brother distinctive as a live act are missing from the recording, especially lead guitarist James Gurley's fuzz-drenched explorations. Not that the final product gave the band any room to stretch out, as it often did in concert: Not one of the 10 songs on the album exceed two minutes, 40 seconds in duration.

Still, "Big Brother & the Holding Company" is an interesting document, casting Janis as a member of a rather democratic aggregation, rather than a superstar with a backing band, as later became the case. The debut LP spreads songwriting credits and even lead vocals across the board, with Gurley, bassist Peter Albin and guitarist Sam Houston Andrew making significant contributions in those regards.

Joplin, of course, is the featured singer on the albums two best-known tracks: "Down On Me," which almost reached the Top 40 as a single, and "Bye, Bye Baby." The latter tune was penned by Texas songwriter Powell St. John, who also wrote material for a band from his home state called the 13th Floor Elevators. As a matter of fact, Janis almost joined that band before deciding to move to San Francisco.

When compared with live versions, the studio "Down On Me" is very subdued, with Gurley playing clean-toned, rather nondescript guitar lines, contrasting his frenzied wailing onstage. Janis, who never was formally trained as a vocalist, hits a flat or otherwise out-of-tune note here and there, but the raw emotion that would create her legend is evident.

Throughout a good bit of "Big Brother & the Holding Company," she serves as a backing vocalist, starting with Gurley's "Easy Rider," with a tune that sounds quite a bit like Jelly Roll Morton's "Whinin' Boy." A distinctive feature for the time is the solo on the break, which is played on the bass instead of guitar.

Andrew's contribution is "Call On Me," which is pretty much a doo-wop ballad featuring a vocal duet between him and Joplin. And Albin's "Caterpillar" is somewhat of a novelty number, with him uttering lines like "I'm an abominable snowman, calling for your love."

The band seems to come closest to replicating its San Francisco psychedelic ballroom-type sound on Albin's "Light Is Faster Than Sound," the one song on which the engineers allowed Gurley to play distorted guitar, and with the modal drone of the album's closer, "All Is Loneliness."

The tracks for "Big Brother & the Holding Company" languished until after the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, which exposed Joplin to the people who mattered. Shad released the album a couple of months later, to the general disappointment of listeners who expected to hear something resembling the band's stage show. Still, the album sold reasonably, peaking at No. 60.

Columbia Records later re-released the debut album, and the obligatory remastered CD version includes four extra tracks. Two of them appeared on a very obscure Mainstream single released almost two years after they were recorded: "Coo Coo," a song by Albin that appeared in a reworked version as "Oh, Sweet Mary" on "Cheap Thrills," and Joplin's "The Last Time." Both are somewhat rawer than the material that appeared on the debut album, giving a good clue as to why they were outtakes.

Janis Joplin's catalog has been expanded by numerous posthumous recordings, including some material from as early as 1964. But if you're curious about what she was doing during her first attempts at cutting an album, give "Big Brother & the Holding Company" a listen.