Big Mama Thornton and that song - Leiber and Stoller ‘HOUND DOG’ 1952/3

MORE ABOUT BIG MAMA 

Big Mama Thornton and T-Bone Walker at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival 

Photo by Willa Davis

"The recording of “Hound Dog” became one of the many legends, rumours, about Big Mama Thornton’s career when, by 1956, the rock ‘n’ roll age was already universal. Elvis Presley recorded “Hound Dog” to international acclaim. The Presley record spurred a number of lawsuits over publishing rights, and Big Mama Thornton would, for the rest of her life, tell how Elvis got rich and famous with “her” song. But to set it straight, Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber wrote “Hound Dog” especially for Big Mama. 

Jerry Lieber remembers:

Absolutely, the afternoon we saw her, Johnny Otis told us to come down to his garage in the back of his house, where he used to rehearse. He wanted us to listen to his people and see if we could write some tunes for them. We saw Big Mama and she knocked me cold. She looked like the biggest, baddest, saltiest chick you would ever see. And she was mean, a “lady bear” as they used to call ‘em. She must have been 350 pounds and she had all these scars all over her face. 

I had to write a song for her 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.”

from an essay by Michael Sporke 

and of course it gives me the opportunity to play my favourite version from film of the day (as ever check the line up on the band!)

Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton's other recordings included the original version of "Ball and Chain", which she wrote. Her recording of "Hound Dog", written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, and later recorded by Elvis Presley, reached Number 1 on the Rhythm & Blues Records chart. According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, "the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument