Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog & Ball N' Chain

It is time continue with more of the great women of this music. Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984)

Thornton was born in Ariton, Alabama, near Montgomery. Her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a gospel singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at very early ages in the church. Following her mother's death in 1941, Thornton left the family home at age 14. She spent the next seven years touring the south with Sammy Green's Georgia-based Hot Harlem Revue, gaining experience as a singer, harmonica player and sometime drummer. In 1948, she settled in Houston, Texas, where she further honed her skills in the local clubs.

Thornton began her recording career in 1951, signing a contract with Don Robey's Peacock Records. While working with fellow Peacock artist, Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog,"  a song written by young songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. (they were teenagers with whom Otis had a sort of mentoring relationship.) The record was produced by Otis, and went to number one on the R&B charts. She never repeated that success but continued to record for Peacock until 1957 performing in the Chitlin Circuit R&B package tours with Little Richard, Junior Parker, Bobby Bland and Esther Phillips.

In 1954, Thornton was one of the eyewitnesses to the accidental suicide death of singer, pianist Johnny Ace. Thornton's account was that Ace was sitting with girlfriend Olivia on his lap, waving his pistol around, pointing it at Willie Mae. "Don't snap that on me," she told him. Johnny grinned and put the gun to Olivia's head. "Stop that, Johnny, you'll git someone killed," Willie Mae shouted at him. "Nothin' to worry about," Johnny replied, coolly, "ain't but one bullet here and I know exactly where it is." He turned the gun on himself, put it to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Other stories from the Peacock/Duke era reveal that Thornton was a huge, intimidating woman with a foul temper. She was known to beat men to a pulp in bar-room brawls and usually collected her gig pay and royalties through sheer physical intimidation (and the rumored pistol in her purse), but she was known to resort to direct violence to extort her payments when necessary.

Big Mama is most often described as a hard drinking 'bull dyke' who loved to party but was prone to violent temper explosions. She allegedly once chased Little Richard for most of an evening with murder on her mind when he took his teasing over her sexual preferences too far. Thornton once even faced down the notoriously tough Don Robey when he pulled his famous pistol on her, telling him that if he failed to kill her on the first shot, they would be surgically removing the pistol from his ass. Robey put the pistol away and pulled out the checkbook.

In a later event she reportedly beat one white record executive relentlessly about the head with her purse whilst onlookers begged her to stop until someone from accounting finally arrived with a check to diffuse the incident. I imagine she didn't have to ask for her check twice after that.

Thornton's career followed the arc of many of the R & B stars, declining through the late 50's and early 60's with the advent of soul and rock and roll, but she was amongst those who were 'rediscovered' in the mid to late 60's in the packaged American Folk tours in Europe. A new recording contract with Arhoolie followed which resulted in Ball N' Chain and the other recordings in the second part of the post.

Throughout the 70's Big Mama continued to perform at festivals with the likes of Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins and B.B. King but her health steadily declined from hard living. Her last appearence was at the 1980 Newport festival. She died in 1984 in Los Angeles at only 57 years old.