Big Mama Thornton

Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton was a powerfully-voiced singer and harmonica player best known for recording the original versions of two songs that became massive hits for other artists: 'Hound Dog' (later covered by Elvis Presley) and 'Ball and Chain' (later covered by Janis Joplin). Born in Alabama, the daughter of a minister, she joined Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue as a teenager and toured the chitlin' circuit throughout the 1940s. Her 1952 recording of 'Hound Dog,' written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, spent seven weeks at number one on the R&B charts, but she saw little financial reward from Presley's 1956 version. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and became a fixture of the blues festival circuit, recording for Arhoolie, Mercury, and Vanguard. Beyond her famous songs, Thornton was a formidable harmonica player and songwriter in her own right. Her influence on Janis Joplin was significant and widely noted, though the precise circumstances of how Joplin encountered 'Ball and Chain' are not as clearly documented as later accounts suggest.