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Janis at her height. The emotion she puts into this performance is, is...well, just watch.

"Ball 'n' Chain" or "Ball and Chain" is a blues song written and recorded by American blues artist [Big Mama Thornton](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=vypSOetzlQo). Although her recording did not appear on the record charts, "Ball 'n' Chain" has become one of Thornton's best-known songs, largely due to performances and recordings by Janis Joplin.

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. This shorter version (without Gurley's extended guitar solo) was released in the 1968 film Monterey Pop, while the longer June 17 version was released in 1995 on the Joplin compilation 18 Essential Songs. Another live version of "Ball 'n' 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.

This song is of the "I've been there" variety. The story is of a man who meets the woman he believes is the love of his life in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel (which exists, it is in Linden TN about 140 miles east of Memphis) and immediately makes a lifelong commitment to her, promising her the storied house on the edge of town with the white picket fence, but in the end she leaves him crying in his beer. The narrator is telling his story to a bartender, about how much he loved her and how badly he misses her. Then, one at a time, other guys in the bar start adding to his story, until he realizes they'd all been scammed by the same girl. In the end, they're all singing in harmony about the "Dixie Chicken" and having a wistful but hearty laugh about all being part of this well-populated men's club.

Robert Fripp–guitar
Ian McDonald–reeds, woodwind, vibes, keyboards, mellotron, vocals
Greg Lake–bass guitar, lead vocals
Michael Giles–drums, percussion, vocals
Peter Sinfield–words and illumination

Erroneously reported at the time, as it was current news, to be about Patty Hearst when it is actually based on a spoiled heir to a fast-food chain who was an ex-boyfriend of Daryl Hall's girlfriend, Sara Allen. "But you can't write, 'You're a rich boy' in a song, so I changed it to a girl," Hall told Rolling Stone.

Hall elaborated on the song in an interview with American Songwriter:

"Rich Girl" was written about an old boyfriend of Sara [Allen]'s from college that she was still friends with at the time. His name is Victor Walker. He came to our apartment, and he was acting sort of strange. His father was quite rich. I think he was involved with some kind of a fast-food chain. I said, "This guy is out of his mind, but he doesn't have to worry about it because his father's gonna bail him out of any problems he gets in." So I sat down and wrote that chorus. [Sings] "He can rely on the old man's money/he can rely on the old man's money/he's a rich guy." I thought that didn't sound right, so I changed it to "Rich Girl". He knows the song was written about him.

Eric Clapton wrote this song, which is a testimony of faith. It's the first song for which he wrote all the lyrics.

Steve Winwood sang lead, as he did with all of the Blind Faith songs. Rick Grech played bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Even though it's a very personal song, Clapton made sure he wouldn't be the lead vocalist by writing it in a higher key than he could sing. He thought Winwood was a much better singer (most would agree), and wanted him on this track. The song is about how Clapton was becoming more comfortable with his life. He had just left Cream at the peak of its popularity, and was looking forward to playing with Blind Faith. He wasn't too comfortable though: Clapton was fighting drug addiction and falling in love with George Harrison's wife, whom he would later marry.

Clapton called this a "song of gratitude." It was one of his first songs to explore spirituality, which he did on some of his solo tracks in the '70s. He said the message of this song was to "say 'thank you' to God, or whatever you choose to call Him, for whatever happens." Blind Faith released just one album, and didn't issue any singles. The album was very successful, going to #1 in both the US and UK, but the band broke up after one difficult tour.

The release of the album that shares the name of this track provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding what appears to be the hood ornament of a Chevrolet Bel Air, which some perceived as phallic. The US record company issued it with an alternative cover showing a photograph of the band on the front as well as the original cover.

The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton's who is primarily known for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. In the mid-1990s, in an advertising circular intended to help sell lithographic reprints of the famous album cover, he explained his thinking behind the image:

"I could not get my hands on the image until out of the mist a concept began to emerge. To symbolize the achievement of human creativity and its expression through technology a spaceship was the material object. To carry this new spore into the universe, innocence would be the ideal bearer, a young girl, a girl as young as Shakespeare's Juliet. The spaceship would be the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the girl, the fruit of the tree of life."

The spaceship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweller at the Royal College of Art. The girl was another matter. If she were too old it would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. The beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence. Where is that girl? Seidemann wrote that he approached a girl reported to be 14 years old on the London Underground about modelling for the cover, and eventually met with her parents, but that she proved too old for the effect he wanted. Instead, the model he used was her younger sister Mariora Goschen, who was reported to be 11 years old. Mariora initially requested a horse as a fee but was instead paid £40.

Bizarre rumours both contributed to and were fuelled by the controversy, including that the girl was Baker's daughter or was a groupie kept as a slave by the band. The image, titled "Blind Faith" by Seidemann, became the inspiration for the name of the band itself, which had been unnamed when the artwork was commissioned. According to Seidemann: "It was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover. The name was instead printed on the wrapper, when the wrapper came off, so did the type."

[Studio Version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBoYPNhSQO0)

I don't intend to but I'm running out of rage for the dying of the light.

"Not Fade Away" is a song credited to Buddy Holly (originally under his first and middle names, Charles Hardin) and Norman Petty (although Petty's co-writing credit is likely to have been a formality) and first recorded by Holly and his band, the Crickets (Joe Mauldin on bass, Jerry Allison on drums, Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar). Until the end of his career, Holly recorded with his group, The Crickets, but he set up a deal with their record company, Decca Records, to release some songs under his name and have others credited to the group. This was credited to The Crickets and released on the Brunswick subsidiary. Songs credited to Buddy Holly came out on Coral Records. Drummer Jerry Allison played a cardboard box for percussion on this. He'd heard Buddy Knox' drummer do the same on "Party Doll."

The song’s popularity has only intensified through the versions of other high-powered rock and roll acts such as The Everly Brothers, The Rolling Stones, James Taylor, and The Grateful Dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp_1LXj4D30YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDPbQxvgZdMYouTube
The Grateful Dead performed “Not Fade Away” 530 times in their career; it was their seventh most-performed song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjArEIVJsa8YouTube
The cover by the Rolling Stones was one of their first hits. Recorded in January 1964 and released by Decca Records on February 21, 1964, with "Little by Little" as the B-side, it was their first Top 10 hit in Great Britain, reaching number three. In March 1964, it was also the band's first single released in the United States, on the London Records label with "I Wanna Be Your Man" as the B-side (It had been briefly preceded by "I Wanna Be Your Man" with "Stoned" as the B-side, but this was quickly withdrawn).

Here they are on the Mike Douglas show, with a bit of silliness to begin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6RWnGQ3XqQYouTube
Their manager, Andrew Oldham, was convinced the Stones would be successful after hearing what they did with this. Said Oldham: "Although it was a Buddy Holly song, I considered it to be like the first song Mick and Keith wrote, in that they picked the concept of applying that Bo Diddley thing to it. The way they arranged it was the beginning of the shaping of them as songwriters. From then on they wrote. At that time, Mick, Keith, and I lived together. They were into the last half bottle of wine and going through, it was one of those magical moments. When Keith played that to me in the front room you could actually HEAR the record in that room. What basically made the record was that whole Bo Diddley acoustic guitar thrust. You heard the whole record in one room. We gotta record it! But there's no way if someone had just said coldly, Right, let's do "Not Fade Away" that we would have wanted to do it without hearing the way that Keith was playing it on the guitar. Keith just did it. And that was that. To me, they wrote the song. It's a pity we couldn't have gotten the money."

Charlie Watts:

We did it with a Bo Diddley beat, which at the time was very avant garde for a white band to be playing Bo Diddley's stuff. It was a very popular rhythm for us in clubs; looking at it from the drumming point of view. So we did it in this slightly different way than Buddy Holly did it." Phil Spector is credited with playing maracas on the record but in fact he was playing an empty cognac bottle with a 50 cent piece.

Bill Wyman:

The rhythm thing was formed basically around the Buddy Holly thing. We brought the rhythm up and emphasized it. Holly had used that Bo Diddley trademark beat on his version, but because he was only using bass, drums and guitar, the rhythm element is sort of a throwaway. Holly played it lightly. We just got into it more and put the Bo Diddley beat up front.

In 2004, this song was ranked number 107 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The Crickets' recording never charted as a single.

Peter & Gordon were a British Invasion-era performing duo, formed by Peter Asher and Gordon Waller, that rocketed to fame in 1964 with "A World Without Love". Peter Asher's sister (the actress Jane Asher) was dating Paul McCartney (of The Beatles), and so Peter & Gordon recorded several songs written by McCartney, with or without John Lennon. "I Go To Pieces" was written by Del Shannon and given to the duo after the two acts toured together.