Big Brother & the Holding Company

The band signed to Bob Shad's Mainstream Records while stranded in Chicago in September 1966. Early sessions did not satisfy them, and the album was made largely in Los Angeles between 12 and 14 December 1966, with ten tracks cut. Mainstream was known for jazz, and Big Brother was its first rock band. The result was not what they expected: the acid-rock distortion and long jams of their shows gave way to clean guitars and songs of about two minutes. Sam Andrew said they could not make the engineer understand what they wanted, because he was afraid of the needle going into the red, which is where they wanted it. Songs such as All Is Loneliness and Light Is Faster Than Sound ran far longer on stage. The band was pleased with Joplin's double-tracked vocals.

Mainstream released the record in August 1967, shortly after the Monterey Pop Festival. It peaked at number 60 on Billboard and spent 30 weeks on the chart. Down on Me, a single from it, entered the Hot 100 only on 31 August 1968, after Cheap Thrills. When Columbia took over the band's contract it reissued the album with Joplin's name on the cover and added Coo Coo and The Last Time.