“Ball and Chain Part” – song by Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company recorded first time June 18, 1967 during the Monterey Pop Festival.
Songwriter: Willie Mae Thornton a.k.a. Big Mama Thornton
Janis Joplin is pure exhilaration throughout, and Mama Cass’ expression tells a truth: there had never been a frontwoman as fiery, as fearless, vulnerable but unstoppable. At the conclusion of the performance, after the chaotic denouement, as Janis sprints offstage bearing an expression of pure childlike glee at her reception, we see Cass’ face again. We can’t hear her, but we can see what she is saying: “Wow!”
Steeped in the blues, but knowing she’s something different than her own idols, Janis Joplin was an exposed nerve at Monterey, living every nanosecond of that lyric in every moment. She won’t stay with Big Brother very long. She won’t stay on this Earth very long. She was as much a shooting star as she was a superstar. And everything that she had to give this planet was laid out on that Monterey stage.
Janis Joplin, who frequently acknowledged Thornton’s musical influence, recorded several live performances of “Ball and Chain”. According to Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist James Gurley, Joplin first heard the song during a performance by Thornton at a bar in San Francisco. The group transformed the song into a slow minor-key blues with breaks. They performed the song at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 to an enthusiastic audience and critical reception. The first performance on June 17 was not filmed, so the band was persuaded to perform the song again on the next day. Drastically edited footage of this second performance (cutting out the second verse and a lengthy guitar solo) featured in the 1968 film Monterey Pop, while the full June 17 performance was released in 1993 on the three-disc box set Janis. Another live version of “Ball and Chain”, recorded March 8, 1968, at the Fillmore East, was included on Big Brother’s 1968 breakthrough album Cheap Thrills. Other live versions are included on Cheaper Thrills, Live at Winterland ’68, Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968, The Woodstock Experience, and In Concert.
