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Janis Joplin’s time in the San Francisco blues crew Big Brother and the Holding Co. was relatively short, only a couple of years — just long enough to record two albums and become an era-defining flashpoint at the Monterey Pop Festival. Their second album, 1968’s Cheap Thrills, became an acid-rock landmark thanks to the barnburner “Piece of My Heart,” a sultry cover of “Summertime” and the crushing, epic cover of Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain.” It went to Number One and was certified gold and within a few months of its release,...

Big Brother & the Holding Company‘s Cheap Thrills — Janis Joplin‘s breakout album and her final one with the band — will be reissued on November 30th via Columbia/Legacy Recordings. The 50th anniversary set will be released under its original title, Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills, which Columbia considered too controversial in 1968.

The new reissue revisits the 1968 sessions that produced the chart-topping Cheap Thrills and comprises alternate song takes. On the 2-cd edition (a different 2-lp edition will also be available), 25 of the 30 songs have never been previously released.

It also...

The story of Janis Joplin has at once fascinated and confounded Hollywood, in equal measure, for decades. The iconic blues vocalist who burst onto the music scene in the 1960s captured the imagination in such a rare way that many have tried to deliver her biopic – and failed. This could be about to change, however, as it is reported that Michelle Williams is in “early talks” to play the titular lead role in Janis.

Janis Joplin shone very bright, but all too briefly as she forged a music career that resulted in just 4 studio albums, released between 1967 and 1971. She built a stellar reputation as an outstanding, captivating live performer, though, and frequently left audiences stunned from 1962, when she really began singing to entertain, and her premature death in 1970. In that fleeting period, she had been the lead singer of Big Brother And The Holding Company, The Kozmic Blues Band, and...