that basically said “Go f--k yourself” but how do you do it without actually saying it?
And how to do it telling a story? I couldn’t just have a song full of expletives, hence
the “Hound Dog.”
Mike Stoller adds, “’Right, ‘You ain’t nothing but a motherf----er.’ She was a wonderful
blues singer with a great moaning style, but it was as much her appearance as her blues style
that influenced the writing of ‘Hound Dog’ and the idea that we wanted her to growl it, which
she rejected at first, her thing was ‘Don’t tell me how to sing no song.’”
“Leiber and Stoller brought me the song, 'Hound Dog,’” Johnny Otis recalls of the time he
produced Big Mama Thornton's recording. “Parts of it weren't really acceptable. I didn't like
that reference to chicken and watermelon, [and] said, 'Let's get that crap out of there.'... This
came out and it a big smash, and everything was all right. I had half the publishing rights and
one third of the song-writing.
“Then Elvis Presley made it a mega hit, and they got greedy. They sued me in court. They
won, they beat me out of it. I could have sent my kids to college, like they sent theirs,” Otis
said. “But, oh well, if I dwell on that I get quite unhappy, so we try to move on.”
The success of the song pushed Big Mama Thornton for a short while to the front of
everyone’s attention. She was added to the “Blues Consolidated Package Show” of Don
Robey’s Peacock label, which featured Johnny Ace, Junior Parker and Bobby Blue Bland, it
was soon obvious that “Hound Dog” would be the biggest seller in the history of Peacock
Records and Big Mama Thornton played it coast to coast. Called the “Peacock`s Belting
Lady Killer of the Blues” or the “Reigning King and Queen of Blues,” Big Mama Thornton
had a triumphal tour success.
Having a job washing and cleaning spittoons in a local tavern as a kid in her home town of
Montgomery, Alabama, Thornton took a chance one night when the tavern’s regular vocalist
got drunk. She convinced the tavern owner that she could do the job. She never looked back
after that. When Willie Mae was about 14 years old, the Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue,
with the comedian Snake Anthony, played at the Pekin Theatre in Montgomery. The Theatre
organized a singing audition and Willie Mae took part. She won first prize and began
traveling with Sammy Green’s “Hot Harlem Revue.” The impulse to do this came probably
from Marie Smith McClain, known as Walking Marie and later as Diamond Teeth Mary. The
blues singer (and probably the stepsister of Bessie Smith) was performing then with the Hot
Harlem Revue and years later she remembered, “I met Willie Mae Thornton when she was
working on a garbage truck. I heard her singing when the garbage truck went by. I took her
off the garbage truck.”
After a few years with the “Revue,” Thornton went to Houston, Texas, to sing on her own. It
was there that Don Robey, owner of Peacock Records, heard Big Mama Thornton and signed
her to an exclusive five year contract and had her play in his newly opened Bronze Peacock
Club. And the rest is history….
After “Hound Dog,” Thornton’s musical career went up and down until she died. She toured
Europe twice as part of the American Folk Blues festival, both times with enormous success.
She wrote a song named “Ball & Chain” that made Janis Joplin famous and the success gave
Big Mama Thornton a new audience as part of the blues revival in the sixties. She got cancer
and had a car accident that forced her to stay in a wheelchair for a while. But she recorded
blues, gospel, rock ’n’ roll and performed until the end even when her health got worse over