Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton's other recordings included the original version of "Ball and Chain", which she wrote.
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, on 11 December 1926, Willie Mae Thornton’s father was a minister, and as a young girl, she and her six brothers and sisters frequently sang in his church. While still very young, she learned to play harmonica and drums, and by the age of 14 – following the death of her mother – she had left home to make her way in music. She travelled and sang throughout the South and when Sam Green’s Hot Harlem Revue came to town in 1941, Green hired her. She spent the next seven years on the road with the Revue, singing and dancing in clubs all through the South.
In 1948 she left the Revue in Texas and settled in Houston, playing with Louis Jordan’s band, Bobby Bland, Ray Charles and Little Junior Parker, among others. She was discovered while singing at Houston’s Eldorado Ballroom by a black entrepreneur and reputed gambler named Don Robey, at that time the owner of several Houston businesses including a local record shop, a club called The Bronze Peacock, the Buffalo Booking Agency, a publishing company and the Peacock record label.
Robey signed her to a deal with Peacock in 1951. He was evidently impressed by her seasoned live performance; she was one of the rare women singers of that era who was also a capable multi-instrumentalist, and her size was already impressive enough (six feet tall and 300 pounds) to give her the nickname she wore for the rest of her life.
She carried forward the ‘tough blues mama’ musical tradition established years earlier by Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie, and was a forceful, hearty blues shouter of tremendous power and control. Robey felt that her exciting stage performance would translate well onto records, and he spent the next five years trying, with some success, different ways to market her sound. In 1952 she joined Johnny Otis’ Rhythm and Blues Caravan and played in the North for the first time, touring almost continuously.
The following year she had her own #1 R&B hit with Hound Dog, recorded with the Otis band in Los Angeles. Elvis Presley‘s version (which was a #1 pop single in 1956) was directly influenced by Thornton’s 1953 recording of the song. Thornton moved to California in 1956 and was living in San Francisco when the Sixties blues revival brought her to the attention of young white singers like Janis Joplin. Thereafter, Big Mama was on the bill at most of the major jazz and blues festivals, both in the US and overseas.
She also appeared on "The Dick Cavett Show,""The Della Reese Show,""The Midnight Special," and "Rock 1." TV host Michael Erlewine said, "Big Mama liked people. She'd look right at you and talk to you. She wasn't afraid of you, so there was nothing separating you and her. She included you in whatever was going on, but she wasn't catty. She was real.""She was a big woman," he added, "but she could sing her ass off. Janis Joplin learned most of her style from her. Everyone listened to Janis instead of Big Mama. I never quite understood that."
Ball and Chain, which was written by Thornton, was recorded by Janis Joplin in 1968. But Big Mama herself never profited: “Didn’t get no money from them at all,” she once commented. “Everybody livin’ in a house but me. I’m just livin’.” Big Mama Thornton kept working and kept winning fans into the 1980s, long after Joplin and Presley were dead. This was small consolation as she sank deeper and deeper into poverty.
Thornton had become an alcoholic. She had no royalties, not even from her reissues which were selling, and lived almost penniless in a Los Angeles boarding house. She died from a heart attack in Los Angeles on July 25, 1984. Said Johnny Otis: "It was Willie Mae, her sister, and a couple of friends sitting around drinking Jack Daniels or something. Willie Mae just put her head down on the table and never came up." She was 58.
Like many black performers, Thornton gained a place in death she had never enjoyed in life. Her records are still heard and her name is frequently mentioned in books and articles. She was a truly great performer. (Edited from Nostalgia Central & Encyclopedia.com)
Here’s Big Mama Thornton performing Ball and Chain with Buddy Guy's Blues Band in 1970.