Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was an rhythm and blues and blues singer and songwriter, who is best-known for recording the original 1953 version of the legendary song “Hound Dog”, which Elvis Presley famously covered. Born in Alabama in 1925, she learnt to sing in church but became a disciple of Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, moving in 1948 to Houston, Texas, a buzzing centre of jump blues, where she built a reputation as a powerful performer and signed a contract with Don Robey’s Peacock Records in 1951. Working with Johnny Otis and the emerging young song writing and producing duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, she recorded their song “Hound Dog”, and it provided her with her sole career hot, topping the US R&B charts, and becoming a landmark record.

This contains all her releases during the first decade of her career, initially for the Peacock label and then for the small Irma and Bay-Tone labels after she moved to San Francisco in the late ‘50s. She later became a popular performer during the ‘60s blues boom and made several albums. She was a powerful extrovert expressive artist, and this collection represents her output from a key era of her career.

REVIEWS

When it comes to debating the greatest male voices to emerge in the fifties, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Richard are always fighting it out at the top of the league. When it comes to putting the fairer sex under the spotlight, Willie Mae ‘Big Mamma’ Thornton is also always up there fighting for honours. And quite rightly so for a singer who was built like a heavyweight boxer and blessed with a pair of leather lungs that at their most ferocious, were capable of stopping a clock and making Brian Blessed’s booming vox box sound like a rat’s fart. Alternatively, in more emotive moments, she had the ability to pull at the heart-strings like the Blessed Mary. A Big Mama CD is for life and not just for lockdown!  –  Pete O'Gorman (Now Dig This Issue 448)