Ball and Chain

Big Mama Thornton wrote and recorded the song. Arhoolie Records released it in 1968, as an edited single and in a four-and-a-half-minute version on a joint album with Lightnin' Hopkins and Larry Williams. James Gurley said Joplin first heard the song when Thornton played a bar in San Francisco. The band turned it into a slow minor-key blues with breaks. In a 1972 interview Thornton said she had given Joplin permission to record it and had received royalties.

At the Monterey Pop Festival the band played it on 17 June 1967, but the performance was not filmed, so they played it again the next day. That second performance, with the second verse and a long guitar solo cut, is in the 1968 film Monterey Pop. The full first performance was released in 1993 on the box set Janis.

On Cheap Thrills it closes the record at 9:30 and is the only track that is a live performance. Pitchfork wrote that it turns Thornton's song into a "languid acid-rock jam", and noted that its first ten seconds sound like a false start. A 9:42 version is on Live at Winterland '68.