Sam Houston Andrew III (December 18, 1941 – February 12, 2015) was an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, composer, artist and founding member and guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company.
By the time he was seventeen living in Okinawa, he already had his own band, called the "Cool Notes", and his own weekly TV show, an Okinawan version of American Bandstand.
Janis Joplin was recruited by band manager Chet Helms to join Big Brother as lead singer on June 4, 1966.
In February 1997, Guitar Player magazine listed Andrew's and Gurley's work on "Summertime" as one of the top ten psychedelic solos in music history.
In December 1968, Andrew and Joplin left Big Brother and the Holding Company to form the Kozmic Blues Band.
It toured across North America, and the spoken word quartet Theatre of Light, that besides Andrew, featured The Vagabond Poet, Tony Seldin, keyboardist Tom Constanten and harpist-pianist Elise Piliwale.
[5][6] On February 20, 1993, he performed with a group including Tom McFarland, Fat James and Guitar Slim in Occidental Park, in Seattle.
He died in San Francisco, California on February 12, 2015, following complications from open-heart surgery due to a heart attack suffered ten weeks prior.