Celebrating Blues Singer Big Mama Thornton – Let her rock your world !
Big Mama Thornton reminds me of my grandmother – big, bold, sassy and carrying a large purse and not afraid of using it. The record above and the record cover below are from the collection of 18,000 LPs you can listen to in the Arts Department at the Toronto Reference Library .
Chris Strachwitz, who founded Arhoolie Records, says on the back of the album: "Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton is in my opinion the greatest female blues singer of this and any other decade". Big Mama Thornton's father was a Baptist minister. Like so many other early blues singers her early exposure to song and music was in the church choir. She left home at age 14 and went on to a influential career.
Big Mama Thornton was the original singer of Hound Dog in 1952 and it was Number 1 on the Billboard charts for 7 weeks. Several years later, in 1956, Elvis did a rock and roll version which has become iconic – although the song may have originally been meant as comic relief.
Big Mama continued singing Hound Dog into the 1970s and even up to the year of her death in 1984. She had suffered healthwise from drink in the 1970s and an auto accident in the early 1980s – towards the end of her life she faced great poverty and her last concert was a fund raiser to help her out financially.
Big Mama also wrote and sang her own material – in particular the song Ball and Chain. Janis Joplin later did a cover version of it to great acclaim.
Big Mama was self- taught in the harmonica and the drums. The harmonica was a real happening instrument in the blues – be prepared to have your musical boundaries expanded and see her hold her own with John Lee Hooker and Dr Ross.
If you're interested in exploring the history of the blues there are lots of books available – you may also be interested in some of the CD compilations below. Big Mama has several CDs at the library.
Be sure to check out the Martin Scorsese DVD and book compilation on the Blues.
If you're interested in early blues you may also enjoy the blog post I did on Blind Willie Johnson.
Do you have a blues giant you would like to share with the Toronto Public Library blog readers? Why not write a comment and let us know ?
8 thoughts on “Celebrating Blues Singer Big Mama Thornton – Let her rock your world !”
It’s always annoyed me that other people had hits with Willie Mae Thornton’s songs, obscuring her own great talent. Her Hound Dog is so much better than the one that rube from Tupelo, Mississippi sang -earthier and more emotional.
My favourite is I Smell a Rat which is humourous, but also ominous. You would not want to be the man she was singing about in that song.
Alyson – you’re right
“I Smell A Rat” is a great song – quite frightening !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMwWOYlh_g
You may also be interested in her song “Tom Cat” which is almost like a spoof on hound dog – but a bit more biting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEUH6_IJJbY&feature=related
Lastly, as it reminds me of old country, I am especially fond of her “Little Red Rooster” which is kind of mellow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ycw4uaXPRU
Interesting article and links, Bill V.
This is the first time I’ve come across such an article on the TPL’s website, assuming this will be a new feature of the latest iteration?
If so keep up the good work and can we expect similar mini-bio’s and profiles of other less celebrated musicians/artists in the future? I ask as I am somewhat familiar with the reference library’s collection of middle eastern and african field recordings (on vinyl, natch).
Jean-Paul – thanks for your comments and I am glad you liked the blog posting on Big Mama Thornton. You may be interested in an earlier post I did on Blind Willie Johnson in February (see the sidebar or go to this link
https://blogs.tpl.ca/arts_culture/2011/02/celebrating-blind-willie-johnson-gospel-blues-john-the-revelator-.html )
I am planning to do a series relating to the music on the Golden Records on the Voyager spacecraft – this is international music – a complete list is below. Blind Willie was on that disc and based on the success of that posting we’ll do more – I am thinking of a posting on Gamelan music from Indonesia – stay tuned!
http://re-lab.net/welcome/music.html
LOVE your blog posts Bill; I’m now in the habit of checkin’ in to see if you have done another ! I also appreciate Big Mama’s hat stylings.
Very interesting series planned, but at the risk of sounding naive, was Golden records the label that these artists appeared on? I’m assuming not as the range is obvious.
Looking forward to the Gamelan blog and subsequent postings.
Hi Jean-Paul – No Golden Record is not a label – it’s rather an actual object – On the Voyager spacecraft they placed these golden records filled with music, sounds, speeches and greetings from Earth.
See this link – it describes the project
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html
There are some more details on the Blind Willie Johnson blog posting
https://blogs.tpl.ca/arts_culture/2011/02/celebrating-blind-willie-johnson-gospel-blues-john-the-revelator-.html
And here’s a wikipedia article about them – !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
Carl Sagan was heavily involved with the project – he has a book called Murmurs of the Earth – The Voyager Interstellar record – that describes everything about it. This book is available at the public library to borrow or use at the Toronto Reference Library :
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=carl+sagan+voyager
Again, many thanks Bill for the most informative links!
Very interesting project indeed.