by Francesca Harding
It’s always amazed me how easily history can be suppressed. More often than we’d like, facts are watered down, twisted into unrecognizable versions. It’s tragic really, that we can spend days, even years in a particular city, walking down its streets, jogging around its lakes and partying in its bars never knowing that the very corners we’re standing on were places where entire movements were birthed – history quite literally at our fingertips without us having the slightest clue. This happens time and again in the art space: innovators whose talents and hard work have had an immeasurable impact on the cultural landscape yet are somehow forgotten.
Such is the case with Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, a singer-songwriter whose musical style had tremendous influence on the blues, R&B and most poignantly on rock and roll. I myself didn’t come across her work until about six or seven years ago, which is a really embarrassing admission. But doing a deep dive into the specifics of Willie Mae’s life proved more difficult than I had anticipated. Relatively speaking, there isn’t a ton of information available about her. By most accounts, she was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1926. She had at least four siblings (though some sources place the count closer to seven) and grew up in the church, her father a minister and her mother a singer in the church’s choir. As the story goes, she was forced to get a job at a local tavern when her mom passed away. One evening, the singer who was scheduled to perform at the venue was too drunk to take the stage. Despite a lack of formal training and singing experience, a 14-year-old Willie Mae volunteered to perform in her place and the rest is history, albeit a complicated one filled with stunted success and unjust losses. It is also a history that is in danger of being forgotten all together.
Willie Mae would go on to have a career that spanned over four decades, propelled by the deep, gritty texture of her vocals – grit that undoubtedly reflected her life’s hardships. It’s no wonder that she took on the stage name “Big Mama” Thornton. She toured the chitlin circuit throughout the 1940s, a string of performance venues in the Midwest and the South that provided a space for Black performers to play in a then-deeply segregated U.S. but would eventually find herself wowing audiences across the nation, from New York to Los Angeles. Settling in Houston in the late 40s, she continued her influence on the music scene by helping to shape the sound and style of “Texas-blues”, an evolving blues sub-genre known to incorporate swing and big band elements.
It was in 1952 when she decisively shaped history. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had written what we now know as the hit-record Hound Dog with her in mind and approached her to record the track. It’s worth mentioning here that Leiber and Stoller tried to give her direction on how to sing the lyrics but she quickly shut that down, knowing full well how to breathe heart and soul into the words on that page. The record came to life, fashioned in her rough yet glorious likeness in just one take and in less than 20 minutes. But when we talk about loss and the all-too-common practice of casting pioneers to the wayside, this is a prime example. The record sold 2 million copies and held the number one spot on the R&B charts for seven weeks. Big Mama Thornton’s compensation? A mere $500. Three years later, a 21-year old Elvis Presley would re-record the song. Young, white and digestible to the masses, mainstream audiences couldn’t get enough of the more watered-down version, which would go on to spend 11 weeks at the top of the pop charts, sell 11 million copies globally and cement Elvis’ place for many as the “king of rock and roll”. In the documentary Gunsmoke Blues, Big Mama Thornton recounts her team’s attempts to get her and Elvis on the same bill to perform Hound Dog together. Unsurprisingly, Elvis’ camp refused. In the end, Hound Dog made him an incredibly wealthy man; Big Mama Thornton would, years later, die in relative obscurity and poverty at a boarding shelter in Los Angeles.
It’s impossible to discuss Big Mama Thornton’s life without commenting on the likes of Elvis who first mimicked and then profited greatly from Black culture at the detriment of those who created the music and art in the first place. That said, to solely view her life from the vantage point of a system that crippled her success on account of her race and gender would be a further injustice to her legacy. She was so much more than a footstool for unoriginal artists that many attempted to reduce her to. She was a powerhouse of a woman, confident in her sound, her size, her sexuality. While the stories about her life run scarce, by every account she was tough as nails and wildly talented. Her unique sound fueled the foundation that early rock and roll was built upon and her voice birthed generations of singers that would follow. And there have been artists who have sited her impact on their careers, the most prominent being Janis Joplin, whose cover of Big Mama Thornton’s Ball and Chain would serve as Joplin’s break out record. Simply put, had there never been a Big Mama Thornton, rock and roll as we know it would look and feel much differently.
If you want to see Big Mama Thornton’s regality and splendor on full display, watch any archival footage of her performing live, especially before the 1980’s when her health began to visibly deteriorate. In these old clips you’ll see a colossal woman, standing just as tall and sometimes towering over the men she shares the stage with, her 6-foot frame likely draped in a pin-striped men’s suit that was her signature attire while performing. She’ll look beautiful, her high cheekbones and deep-set eyes lending itself to a face full of expression. And when she sings, it’s as if her voice reaches back to some mythical reservoir of communal grief; every hoop, howl and growl a different color blending together in a painstaking portrayal of universal suffering. Big Mama Thornton knew our pain, understood us every time we faltered, extended a hand for every time the world dealt us a blow that would have us question our worth and our beauty. Big Mama Thornton sang our heartbreak and our resilience.
I’ve thought about her often over the past six years since I’ve gotten to know more about her through song and story. And I wonder about past traumas, how to heal the injustices of the past, if it’s even possible to do so and if it is, what that might look like. Her story is so common, a brilliant artist who was never given her just due while alive, which no doubt contributed to an abuse of alcohol that would lead to her death in 1984. She was deserving of all of the accolades that were bestowed upon Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lewis but remained under-appreciated. What a travesty that her potential wasn’t truly nurtured or celebrated, through no fault of her own. Even more egregious is that Big Mama Thornton’s name is often left out of modern conversations discussing the inception of rock and roll. Is it enough to remember her? To listen to her music and to find joy in the blues she sang with such familiarity?
What is clear is the need to understand historical context as it relates to music’s evolution. If we take stock of the current musical landscape, we should know that we didn’t get here by happenstance. More specifically, rock and roll isn’t a genre that was created out of thin air and it certainly didn’t get its start from a young white dude wildly swinging his hips and flapping his arms around on a Memphis stage. Rock and roll was born out of the talents and pain of Black musicians, many whose names we’ll never know.
But we know of Big Mama Thornton, the howling, tough-as-nails singer from southern Alabama. Big Mama Thornton is the queen of rock and roll – a title she is just as deserving to carry as any.
Press play (below) to hear a Big Mama Thornton tribute mix.