James Gurley, the guitarist for Janis Joplin`s band Big Brother and the Holding Company, has died in California at the age of 69.
Gurley died in Palms Springs on December 20 after a heart attack.Big Brother member Sam Andrew said in a post at the band’s website, “For me and many people, James was the real 1960s, the real exemplar of that counterculture, the forerunner. When I met James in 1966, he was going to die in two weeks of pleurisy. It was always something. James was such a hypochondriac that I was sure he was going to outlive all of us. Now he is gone”.
Sam Andrew founded Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1965 with Peter Albin. Gurley was the next to join. The group felt it needed a strong singer so they approached Austin, Texas singer Janis Joplin who officially joined the group in June,1966.
In September, 1967 the group released its debut album ‘Big Brother and the Holding Company’, recorded in Chicago in just three days. It stayed on the US chart for 30 weeks.
The band recorded just two albums with Janis. ‘Cheap Trills’ was released in 1968. Gurley said in an interview just two years ago that then head of Columbia Clive Davis talked Janis into leaving and going solo and playing with “better” studio musicians.
James Gurley had an interesting life. He had studied at Detroit’s Catholic Brothers of the Holy Cross to become a priest for four years before he joined a band.
He married his wife Nancy and had a son, Hongo, but left Nancy for Janis Joplin. He later returned to Nancy who then became best friends with Janis.
In 1970, Nancy died of a heroin overdose. James was charged with murder and spent two years defending himself. He remarried in 1972 and had another child.
His son Hongo became his drummer in his 80s band ‘Red Robin and the Worms’.
Gurley would have turned 70 on December 22.
Watch Janis Joplin recording session for Summertime:
