Willie Mae \u201cBig Mama\u201d Thornton exuded uncompromising intensity. Her voice conveyed struggle and defiance, fury and hurt, like few others. Standing at 6ft 2in, with an imposing physique and a razor-scarred face, she was a Black, gay multi-instrumentalist who refused to let a racist society or a rapacious industry confine her.<\/p>\n
Thornton should be ranked alongside the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but instead she is little more than a footnote in the histories of Elvis Presley<\/a> and Janis Joplin as the original voice behind songs they would make famous. A new documentary, Big Mama Thornton: I Can\u2019t Be Anyone But Me, aims to right this wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was unique,\u201d says Robert Clem, the documentary\u2019s director. \u201cA female artist who lived by her own rules in a very reactionary era. And fearless \u2013 she stood up to men who tried to rip her off, sang in maximum security prisons, learned to play drums because she got tired of drunk drummers. There\u2019s so much to admire about Big Mama.\u201d<\/p>\n Thornton\u2019s death in 1984, at 57, was barely noted, perhaps because, in the eyes of the music industry, she was a one-hit wonder. Hound Dog would later be defined by Elvis, but it was written for Thornton and she topped the R&B charts with it in 1953 \u2013 then never had any further commercial success. This year is the centenary of her birth and Clem thinks it\u2019s time for Big Mama\u2019s resurrection. Even he, having grown up in her native Alabama, didn\u2019t know her music until he immersed himself in the era for his 2018 gospel documentary How They Got Over. \u201cWillie Mae died too soon,\u201d he says. \u201cIf she had lived longer, she would have got a new audience.\u201d<\/p>\n A Billboard ad for Big Mama Thornton\u2019s Hound Dog, 1953. Photograph: Courtesy Doc\u2019n Roll Festival<\/p>\n Thornton was born in 1926 in Alabama. Her mother died when she was three; her preacher father transported his children by horse and cart as he sought out congregations. Thornton had a piecemeal education that ended when she was 12 and forced to seek work, initially cleaning bars, then collecting refuse on garbage trucks. Aged 14, she was overheard singing while she worked by blues singer \u201cDiamond Teeth\u201d Mary McClain. She began performing alongside comedians, dancers and musicians in the touring Hot Harlem Revue, which featured predominantly gay and lesbian performers (a young Little Richard, born Richard Penniman, also cut his teeth here). This suited Thornton, who preferred menswear and never hid her sexuality, yet the revue paid so poorly she had to shine shoes prior to performances.<\/p>\n Settling in Houston, Texas, in 1948, Thornton attracted the attention of Don Robey, a pioneering African American entrepreneur (and gangster) who owned Duke and Peacock Records. He signed her in 1950 and, when the Johnny Otis Orchestra came to town, Robey suggested Otis recruit Thornton. Otis, a Greek American bandleader dedicated to championing Black musicians, gave her the \u201cBig Mama\u201d stage name, and asked aspiring songwriters Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber to write a song for her. \u201cShe looked like the biggest, baddest, saltiest chick you would ever see,\u201d Stoller said.<\/p>\n They wrote Hound Dog, and Thornton\u2019s recording duly topped the Billboard R&B chart for nearly two months. Robey kept Thornton singing animal-themed comedy songs, which failed to chart: she would claim $500 (\u00a3370) was the only payment Robey gave her for Hound Dog. (Leiber and Stoller also weren\u2019t paid; Robey was renowned for fleecing writers.) Later, she recalled ringing Robey and asking for $50 (\u00a337) to stop her car from being repossessed \u2013 he refused to help, her car was taken and Thornton was again forced to shine shoes outside the clubs she sang in.<\/p>\n Big band action \u2026 Big Mama Thornton performs with Johnny Otis. Photograph: Courtesy Doc\u2019n Roll Festival<\/p>\n Those hardships are etched in her voice, says Black British blues singer Dawnette Fessey: \u201cShe has a punch \u2013 the rawness in her voice. There\u2019s real nuance and real pain. She\u2019s fearless, a survivor. She lost her mother when she was young, as I did, and that is a challenge, one that toughens you up.\u201d<\/p>\n Thornton then had to endure seeing Elvis\u2019s huge success with Hound Dog: his bowdlerised 1956 version spent 11 weeks at No 1, and she held a lifelong grudge towards Presley. \u201cI never got a dime,\u201d she said in 1968 when asked if he had shown any largesse towards her. \u201cHe refused to play with me when he first come out and got famous.\u201d<\/p>\n As Presley\u2019s fortunes soared, hers faltered: by 1960, Thornton was performing as a one-woman band in bars in Oakland, California, singing while playing drums and blowing harmonica. But word got out to white jazz and blues fans in the Bay Area; eminent music journalist Ralph Gleason ensured she performed at 1964\u2019s Monterey jazz festival, while Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records, located Thornton playing poker in a park \u2013 he recalled she kept a loaded pistol on the table in case anyone tried to cheat her \u2013 and persuaded her to join the American Folk Blues<\/a> festival\u2019s 1965 European tour.<\/p>\n Vintage poster advertising gigs by the Grateful Dead and Big Mama Thornton at the Bank venue in Torrance, California, 1968. Photograph: Alamy<\/p>\n Here, she shared the stage with Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker, and captivated audiences. \u201cWe make a bigger hit over there in Europe,\u201d Thornton told historian Studs Terkel in a 1970 interview. Her then manager Jim Moore would recall: \u201cYou really couldn\u2019t believe the reception. Big Mama cried, really cried.\u201d So potent were Thornton\u2019s performances, that Strachwitz recorded her in London. Released in 1966 as In Europe, her debut album is masterly, as is 1967\u2019s Big Mama Thornton With the Muddy Waters Blues Band.<\/p>\n \u201cShe didn\u2019t suffer any fools,\u201d says 82-year-old Memphis blues musician Charlie Musselwhite, who regularly toured with Thornton. Musselwhite tells me how Thornton, once you won her trust, could be warm and kind. \u201cShe would invite me to her room and we\u2019d drink and talk \u2013 she was intelligent, nice. She was also happy being a loner \u2013 I only remember her being with a girlfriend once.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many blues musicians, Thornton relied on alcohol. \u201cMama always had a bottle of Old Grand-Dad, and she and I would take snorts along the way,\u201d says Musselwhite. \u201cShe liked to drink and drive \u2013 which could be terrifying \u2013 but we always got to the motel in one piece.\u201d<\/p>\n Janis Joplin regularly attended Big Mama\u2019s Bay Area performances. Having requested her permission to record Ball and Chain, a song Thornton had written but not yet released (\u201cdon\u2019t fuck it up\u201d, was Thornton\u2019s advice to the young singer), Joplin sang it as a psych-rock howl of frustration on Cheap Thrills, Big Brother and the Holding Company\u2019s chart-topping 1968 album. Joplin, who regularly championed Thornton on stage and in interviews, ensured she received royalties. \u201cWhen I got a check for Ball and Chain off Janis, I got a ball and chain off me,\u201d said Thornton.<\/p>\n The Joplin connection also won Thornton a huge hippy audience: Bill Graham regularly booked her to play Haight-Ashbury\u2019s Fillmore theatre and she appeared at rock festivals, backed by members of the Grateful Dead on occasion. On YouTube, there\u2019s a 1971 concert in Eugene, Oregon<\/a>, where Big Mama, trim and self-assured, commands an appreciative audience of hirsute white youths. While Thornton enjoyed the spotlight, her confrontational manner \u2013 this included punching promoters and musicians who demeaned or didn\u2019t pay her \u2013 meant she often self-sabotaged; and Clem\u2019s film details her rejecting work offers from the likes of Duke Ellington and George Benson.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a really obstinate person,\u201d says Clem. \u201cShe dismissed Duke as \u2018not blues\u2019. John Hammond called her the greatest blues singer since Bessie Smith but, again, they came to loggerheads and couldn\u2019t work together. She hurt her career through actions like this \u2013 she also split from manager James Moore to take up with former boxing champion Archie Moore. James sued her and won.\u201d<\/p>\n From 1970 on, Thornton lived on the road; recording only occasionally, shuttling between boarding houses and sofa-surfing, whiskey her constant companion. A car crash in 1976 hospitalised her for several months. Interviewers regularly asked if she resented not earning a fortune like her famous disciples. Elvis, she once replied, \u201cis making a million. I\u2019m making a zillion nothing, you understand? But I\u2019m still living. Gonna keep living.\u201d<\/p>\n Powerful until the end \u2026 Big Mama Thornton\u2019s final perormance. Photograph: Courtesy Doc\u2019n Roll Festival<\/p>\n Aretha Franklin invited Thornton on to her 1980 TV special and they duetted on Bessie Smith\u2019s Nobody Knows You When You\u2019re Down and Out. Here, Big Mama is no longer \u201cbig\u201d \u2013 while it went unmentioned, cancer was stripping her bulk. Clem\u2019s film features her final performance on 14 April 1984; Thornton is now skeletal, yet continues to sing with conviction while, dressed in cowboy boots, a man\u2019s suit and a huge Stetson hat, she swaggers across the stage. Dying alone, Thornton was buried in a shared pauper\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n Sad as this ending is, Thornton is now being celebrated by generations of Black female singers. Jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater tells me she was inspired by Thornton as a child, as \u201cshe was Black and beautiful and strong\u201d. Valerie June says: \u201cI certainly see her as an ancestor. Last summer I had the opportunity to go to Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Austin, Texas, and to work with students there. It\u2019s organised by LaFrae Ski, a drummer, and she\u2019s doing this wonderful thing teaching girls instruments in Big Mama\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n Thornton\u2019s pride, musicianship, courage and determination to go her own way are what should define her. \u201cBlues was music made by people who came from the very bottom of American society,\u201d says Clem. \u201cThere are not a lot of Buddy Guys out there living long, well-remunerated lives. I hope my film helps get her some recognition, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Mama Thornton: I Can\u2019t Be Anyone But Me<\/a> is touring selected UK cinemas from 19 April as part of Doc\u2019n Roll festival.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willie Mae \u201cBig Mama\u201d Thornton exuded uncompromising intensity. 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