James Gurley

James Martin Gurley (December 22, 1939 – December 20, 2009) was an American musician. He is best known as the guitar player of Big Brother and the Holding Company, a psychedelic/acid rock band from San Francisco which was fronted by singer Janis Joplin from 1966 to 1968.

Gurley was born in Detroit, Michigan.

At the age of nineteen Gurley took up the guitar and began practicing long hours while listening to old Lightnin' Hopkins records. He never had a guitar lesson, preferring to learn by ear. He spent four years at Detroit's Catholic Brothers of the Holy Cross, studying to be a priest.

In 1962, he moved to San Francisco with his wife Nancy and became part of the coffee-house circuit, playing in the folk and country blues tradition. For a time, he played with J.P. Pickens and the Progressive Bluegrass Boys.

In the summer of 1965, Chet Helms brought Gurley to 1090 Page Street to meet Peter Albin and Sam Andrew of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and shortly thereafter, he joined the band. His fearlessly wild guitar playing made the band's reputation for "far-out" psychedelic experimentation. He said it developed from his admiration of John Coltrane's barrier-breaking saxophone solos.

A few weeks after Janis Joplin joined the band, Gurley began having an affair with her. Once Gurley and Joplin became involved, he moved out of the apartment he shared with his wife and moved in with Joplin. According to Joplin, that arrangement ended the day James' wife Nancy Gurley came barging through the front door of Joplin's apartment. "What an embarrassing situation," Joplin told her friend Jim Langdon later. "His old lady comes marching into my bedroom with the kid and the dog and confronts us." Gurley continued his affair with Joplin for a while, but eventually returned to Nancy, who forgave both him and Joplin, with whom she had a close friendship. In 1966, the members of Big Brother, along with their wives and children, all moved into a single house in Lagunitas, California.

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