Cheap Thrills

The band's second album was meant to be live. Concerts were recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, but producer John Simon and manager Albert Grossman were not satisfied, and Columbia had most of the songs re-recorded in the studio. Andrew said the band could not play anything decently enough for the tracks, and that after the tapes were played in Grossman's office they cobbled the record together in the studio. He thought Simon did not understand guitar music. Simon laid crowd noise over the studio takes, so the record was widely taken for a live one. Only Ball and Chain was recorded in front of an audience, and the cover credits named Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium. The voice of Graham introduces the band at the start of Combination of the Two.

Pitchfork's Judy Berman wrote that the crowd noise makes Joplin seem to front San Francisco's rowdiest bar band, and pointed to the breaking glass on Turtle Blues. There are three covers: Summertime, Piece of My Heart and Ball and Chain. Andrew said he liked I Need a Man to Love a lot, a song he and Joplin wrote in about five minutes.

Cover and title

The working title was Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills, and Columbia asked for it to be shortened. Photographs by Richard Avedon were not used, and a photo of the band naked in a hotel bed was rejected. Dave Getz suggested the underground cartoonist R. Crumb. His drawing was originally meant for the back cover and ended up on the front, and Rolling Stone later ranked it ninth on its list of the 100 greatest album covers. A black and white photo of Joplin went on the back.

Reception

The album reached number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart in its eighth week, in October 1968, and held the top spot for eight nonconsecutive weeks. The RIAA certified it gold on 15 October 1968, and it has since been certified 2x Platinum. John Hardin of Rolling Stone wrote that it was not a well-produced, good rock and roll recording. Robert Christgau, in a column, said it "not only gets Janis's voice down" but also did justice to her musicians. Rolling Stone ranked it 338th on its 2003 list of 500 greatest albums and 372nd in 2020. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in the 2012 register. It is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Outtakes from the sessions came out later, among them Catch Me Daddy, Farewell Song, Magic of Love and Harry on the posthumous Joplin album Farewell Song, and Flower in the Sun and Roadblock as bonus tracks on a CD reissue. On 30 November 2018 Columbia/Legacy released Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills in 2CD and 2LP editions. The 30-track CD set has 25 previously unreleased performances, including alternate takes of the album songs and a Winterland Ballroom Ball and Chain from 12 April 1968, with liner notes by Grace Slick and Dave Getz.