Janis Joplin was a lead singer of which band?

Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their lead singer.

Their 1968 album "Cheap Thrills" is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the Billboard charts, and was ranked number 338 in Rolling Stone's the "500 greatest albums of all time." The album is also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die."

Joplin sang for the first time with Big Brother in 1966. It took a while for some of the band's followers to accept the new singer. Her music was completely different from that which Big Brother was playing at that time. Big Brother had a very experimental and unconventional sound, but with Joplin, they became more disciplined musicians, their songs adopted a more traditional structure, and the band started to increase its popularity in the San Francisco psychedelic scene.