Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton - Hound Dog (Lieber and Stoller)

 

Hound Dog and  Down Home Shakedown 

Big Mama Thornton performing at the Berkeley Folk Music Festival,  1970

Mike Stoller: Johnny Otis said, 

“Are you familiar with Willie Mae Thornton?” I said, no. 

He said, “Well, I gotta do a session with her, so you better get Jerry and come over to my place and listen to it, because I’m gonna need some songs.” 

So we went over, and she knocked us out. We went back to my house and, in about 10 or 15 minutes, we wrote “Hound Dog” and took it back. When it was just written lyrics on a piece of paper, she started to croon it. So then we had to perform it for her, as I played the piano and Jerry sang. The band was cracking up, to hear Jerry singing as if he were a blues singer, let’s put it that way. But she got it.

The next day we went into the studio to record, at Radio Recorders Annex (in Hollywood), and as we were walking in, Jerry said, 

“You know, she ought to growl it.” And I said, “Yeah… Why don’t you tell her?” And he said, “Why don’t you tell her?” [Laughs.] 

Anyway, one of us said, “Uh, Big Mama, you know, you could growl it,” and she said, “Don’t be telling me how to sing the blues!” 

[The version Leiber and Stoller relay in their memoir has a little more lewdness to the response.] But the first take was great. The second take was perfect. She growled it both times.

While Stoller came to admire Presley’s talents, he never was all that fond of his take on “Hound Dog.” 

“It didn’t have the groove that Big Mama’s record had, which was fantastic,” says Stoller. 

Neither Leiber and Stoller nor Thornton ever got paid much for her version of the song, and Stoller acknowledges that as a tragedy, along with the general lack of cultural recognition for her. 

“That’s true of not only Big Mama, but of many black performers and songwriters,” he says, noting that he and Leiber “did, on occasion, send her some funds.”

- Variety