Roots of Big Brother and the Holding Company

Roger Kynard "Roky" Erickson was an American musician and singer-songwriter. Called an "outsider genius", he was a founding member and leader of the 13th Floor Elevators, as well as a pioneer of psychedelic rock music during the mid to late 1960s. Additionally, he founded the band Roky Erickson and the Aliens in the late 1970s.

Timothy Charles Buckley III was an American musician. He began his career based in folk rock, but subsequently experimented with genres such as psychedelia, jazz, the avant-garde, and funk.

Ultimate Spinach was a short-lived American psychedelic rock band from Boston, Massachusetts which was formed in 1967. In terms of style and national recognition, the band was one of the most prominent musical acts to emerge from the "Bosstown Sound", which was a marketing campaign posing as a regional attempt to compete with the San Francisco Sound. During the group's existence, they released three albums, with their self-titled debut the most commercially successful.

"Piece of My Heart" is a romantic soul song written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns, originally recorded by American gospel and soul singer Erma Franklin in 1967. Franklin's single peaked in December 1967 at number 10 on the Billboard Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart in the United States.

Erma Vernice Franklin was an American gospel and soul singer. She recorded the original version of "Piece of My Heart", written and produced by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns in 1967, for which she was nominated for a Grammy Award. A cover version of the same song was recorded the following year by Big Brother and the Holding Company, with lead vocals by Janis Joplin. Franklin was the elder sister of singer Aretha Franklin.