Willie May Thornton, a.k.a. Big Mama Thornton, was “an Alabama kid”, as she said once in an interview, who ended up really getting her start in Houston, with the semi-disreputable Don Robey who ran a nightclub called the Bronze Peacock Club, and he also ran a little record label from a back room (Peacock Records). He had a bad reputation for being violent with his talent, and Thornton was just a teenager, 14 years old, when she started singing at his club. Little Richard was singing there too! He had STORIES. She saw a lot of shit. She experienced a lot of shit. Her life was difficult. She grew up in poverty, had a kid as a teenager, and then lost the child due to being deemed “unfit”. She was just a kid herself. She was, as they say, a “big girl”, and she dressed in so-called “masculine” clothes, so she didn’t really “fit” anyone’s idea of a lead singer. But her voice was so commanding, her presence so dominating, her performance style so exhilarating she literally would not be denied. Audiences went absolutely wild for her.
Her dad was a minister, and she was surrounded by gospel music, and really not all that much blues singing (one of the many quirks of her story). When she started singing the blues, it was as though she invented it. She auditioned for the Hot Harlem Revue when they came through Montgomery, and joined them on tour. Nobody was getting paid much. She was still living in poverty, and struggling to survive. The show reached Houston, and she quit. Houston would be her home base, Houston would be where things really started happening for her. This is where she met and was hired by Don Robey, this is where she met everybody, who came through on their various tours and played the Peacock. People like Big Joe Turner, Fats Domino, and most importantly Johnny Otis. Johnny Otis was the child of Greek immigrants who chose to live as a Black man (for many complex reasons but one was his marriage to a Black woman at a time when interracial marriage was illegal). Most importantly, he “discovered” so many people who would eventually become legends, who brought rhythm and blues to the wider world.
Willie Mae auditioned for Johnny Otis, and he took her on tour. He’s the one who gave her the name “Big Mama”. She sang with his band behind her. They toured the South, the East Coast, then Otis took her out to Los Angeles. This is where Otis introduced her to the songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller who had a little song in their pocket called “Hound Dog”. She recorded it, and Johnny Otis played drums in the band behind her, but the song wasn’t released for a couple of years. She was on tour in the Midwest in 1953 when she heard herself on the radio, and the DJ called it a hit “nationwide”. This was the first she heard of it. She couldn’t even remember the lyrics it was so long ago.
“Everybody went for it. Hound Dog took off like a jet.” — Big Mama Thornton
So, for some perspective which might have been lost in the mists of time: Big Mama Thornton, a Black woman, became famous for a song written by two Jewish men, and recorded by a Greek-American man living as a Black man. Additionally, at the time – late 40s, early 50s – other ethnicities/races weren’t considered exactly “white”, and Jewish people and Greek people were among them. This borderline-type thing is a huge part of the story of rock ‘n roll. Things are complicated.
Leiber and Stoller were teenagers at the time. Crazy! And Big Mama Thornton was barely out of her teens. They were the living embodiment of the demographical youth explosion, across cultures and races and classes and landscapes, which was going on overall in every population in America in the post-war years.
Thornton recorded a couple of other songs by Leiber and Stoller, who were the hottest thing going at the time, writing star-making songs. Songs like “I Smell a Rat”:
And “Nightmare”:
There was a huge copyright dispute between Leiber/Stoller and Otis, which resulted in a lot of bitterness, and all of this was – obviously – complicated immeasurably by the improbable explosion of Elvis Presley, and his version of “Hound Dog”, which helped make his name. (The copyright issue was massive, and so many people got screwed over. This was before the rise of the singer-songwriter, those who kept the copyrights, sang their own stuff, got the money they deserved. The copyright thing was one of the reasons why the so-called “Colonel” established an Elvis Presley songwriting-publishing arm of the operation, so that Elvis – even though he didn’t write the songs – would have the copyright. This worked for a while. Plenty of songwriters – who had no expectation of making much money – would have killed to have Elvis sing one of their songs, and were happy – at the time – giving up their rights. It was a short-sighted world. This whole copyright thing ended up screwing Elvis, post the rise of the singer-songwriter, because songwriters stopped giving their shit away. See: the famous example of Dolly Parton and Elvis. Songwriters refusing to give away their own copyright to Elvis meant the quality of his songs suffered. There’s a reason for everything.)
A lot of people sang “Hound Dog”, it was just that kind of song, and it was an era when everyone sang everyone else’s stuff. But it was Elvis who catapulted it to another level in 1956. He changed the lyrics, which basically erases the meaning of the song. The song is about a pimp, not a dog. Elvis’ performance of it is ferocious and when he did it on the Milton Berle Show it started the nationwide controversy around him, basically racist in nature. If you go back and listen to what people were actually saying about him at the time, it might be a bit of a revelation for those who have never heard of it. It was a race thing and he was a white man. He was declaring his affinity for Black music, and this was tantamount to crossing the “color line”. He was “bringing down the white man to the level of the N-word”, was one famous comment (outraged white-man official saying this on camera). Elvis broke all kinds of taboos, including the undeniable fact that Black kids flocked to his shows alongside white kids. This was also happening to Black performers, like Little Richard, etc., where white kids were flocking to the shows, causing all sorts of “problems” for racist white nightclubs. It’s a huge issue involving racism and history and culture and Big Mama Thornton was, ultimately, a victim of all of it.
At any rate, Elvis erased Big Mama’s version. His fame erased pretty much everything that came before him, even if it was just a couple of months before him, and it’s not his fault, but people who care about this stuff – music and history – need to look closely at what was going on and give props where they are due. There are so many people who deserve spots in the history of this era. Who deserve to be seen as pioneers, who need to be UN-erased. Baz Luhrmann’s movie covers all this, and Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) is seen singing “Hound Dog” in a club in Memphis, crushing it, her massive voice floating out into the air (which was what it was really like, when the song first went nationwide. It was everywhere). Luhrmann’s presentation makes it clear the originator. (Tragically, Dukureh died in July 2022, just a month after the film was released.)
Luhrmann’s film condenses the timeline a little bit (and the timeline was already condensed). At this point, there’s really no excuse not to know about Big Mama Thornton.
In 1963, 10 years after she recorded “Hound Dog”, Big Mama Thornton recorded an “answer” to the song, called “Tom Cat”.
Unfortunately, it was released on the day (maybe? or maybe right around there) that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and so it was ignored. Again, none of this was her fault. A victim of circumstances.
She died in 1984. She never stopped touring and recording. In 1980, visibly ill (she’d lost over 100 pounds), she appeared alongside Aretha Franklin. Once we start getting into the 60s/70s/80s, we start to have more footage of these legends performing live, due to variety shows, and the filming of concerts. We are lucky to have this:
In an interview, she expressed a desire to sing more spirituals (“I feel that I got the voice. I feel like I got the power”), and she also expressed understandable resentment at the “youngsters” coming up behind her, who didn’t pay tribute to – or give a shit about – or even KNOW about – the “old-timers”, as she called herself. The ones who paved the way.
“The old-timers got more to offer than some of those youngsters. If people would just listen to the old timers, they’d realize the old timers are still going. Let me show the world what I got. That’s all I want.” — Big Mama Thornton
It’s a very sad story. Johnny Otis became a reverend and he gave the eulogy at her funeral, saying,
“Don’t waste your sorrow on Big Mama. She’s free. Don’t feel sorry for Big Mama. There’s no more pain. No more suffering in a society where the color of skin was more important than the quality of your talent.”
I can’t close this without mentioning her breathtaking rendition of “Summertime”, from Porgy and Bess. I love the arrangement, it’s luscious and intricate, it’s slow and languid, giving her room to do her thing. The arrangement makes an impression, but it doesn’t overpower the astonishing things she’s doing with the vocals, or her interpretation of the song. It’s the base from which she is able to SOAR.
“Summertime” is a MAJOR performance from her, and so I’ll end with it. Take a moment. Listen to the whole thing. Reflect on the impact she had. It’s important.
Reference:
Audio of an interview with her. It’s great because so many people told her story FOR her. Here, she tells it herself.
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