Willie Mae Wraps the Blues in Big Mama's Arms

2 LA Teen Blues Addicts and One Big Voice: Rock 'n Roll Alchemy [Music and History]

At age nine, living in the Bronx, walking under the Jerome Avenue El past the candy store next to PS 33 and hearing in the street the rough voice of the woman who first sang Hound Dog hit me like a molten vat of 100% adrenaline. Something has always drawn me toward the crusty female voices — Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, Melanie Martinez, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey — but Big Mama Thornton damn near paralyzed me with a surge of pure awe. When I first heard her voice, I thought she was talking to a stray dog in the song. It seemed like a lot of wind power to expend on a non-pet.

Kansas City Blues Society, from Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton by Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the February 1995 Blues News

American Popular Music in the Early 1950’s: Soft and Easy

Romantic ballads — such as Percy Faith’s Song From Moulin Rouge, Leroy Anderson’s Blue Tango and Nat King Cole’s Too Young — dominated US record sales in the 1950-54 period. Rock ‘n’ Roll tiptoed into the top ten in 1955, with Rock Around the Clock and Dance With Me Henry. Then, suddenly (as it seemed) in 1956, Rock began to dominate the charts. Elvis Presley had #s 1, 2, and 8, with Heartbreak Hotel, Don’t Be Cruel, and Hound Dog.

The Unleashing:

Rock ‘n’ Roll did not erupt onto the scene. It percolated. On August 13, 1952, in the Black-owned Peacock recording studios in Los Angeles, two recent high school graduates still too young to vote — Mike Stoller’s melody and Jerry Leiber’s words — were massaged, re-framed, and stretched by Willie Mae Thornton’s powerful voice into the first genuine Rock ‘n’ Roll hit song.

It was pretty raunchy, lyrics with lots of insinuation blended with a hard-banging melody. A bold sound from two 19-year-olds, who would have had trouble getting a hearing from any white-owned record labels. This was a Black-label blues message song before the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll music” had even hit the airwaves.

Willie Mae was 25 years old when she recorded Hound Dog. She already had been a professional blues singer for twelve years. Did choosing her “Big Mama” stage persona help her feel stronger and more mature, give her more confidence, in a highly competitive business with an itinerant life style and few guarantees ? Whatever else it did, being Big Mama seemed to release a transcendent inner vocal power that could astonish and mesmerize her listeners.

Original Lyrics:

The song’s original lyrics would have sounded inappropriate, even cruel, if Elvis had sung them. It’s likely that even Sam Phillips at Sun Records would not have recorded the original — and Elvis had moved to RCA by 1956. when he recorded Hound Dog.

“You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Been snoopin' 'round the door
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Been snoopin' 'round my door
You can wag your tail
But I ain't gonna feed you no more

You told me you was high-class
But I could see through that
Yes, you told me you was high-class
But I could see through that
And daddy, I know
You ain't no real cool cat

You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Been snoopin' 'round the door
You're just an old hound dog
Been snoopin' 'round my door
You can wag your tail
But I ain't gonna feed you no more, oh play it on Sam, oh!

Aw, listen to that there old hound dog
Oh, play it, it s'all right in here
Oh, listen to that there old hound dog holler
Oh, play it boy, play it
Oh, you make me feel good
Oh, do the mess around right now, yeah
Now wag your tail
Oh, get it now
Oh, get it now, get it, get it, get it
Oh, go, holler boy

You made me feel so blue
You made me weep and moan
You made me feel so blue
Well you made me weep and moan
'Cause you ain't looking for a woman
All you lookin' is for a home

You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Quit snoopin' 'round the door
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Quit snoopin' 'round my door
You can wag your tail
But I ain't gonna feed you no more, oh!”

[Entire band whoops, moans and barks like a pack of dogs.]

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller

Instant Chemistry: the Blockbuster Composed in Twelve Minutes

Willie Mae Thornton was an Alabama girl, a preacher’s daughter who learned music singing in her dad’s church choir. Even as a preteen, Willie Mae developed a powerful singing voice. At age 13, she was recruited to sing for Sammy Green’s “Harlem Revue” by Bessie Smith’s half-sister Mary ‘Diamond Teeth’ Smith. By her early 20’s, Willie Mae had achieved prominence as “Big Mama” Thornton, singing Texas blues in Houston clubs in the late 1940’s. Needing fresh material for a tour with bandleader Johnny Otis’ traveling show, in 1952 while in Los Angeles, Otis invited the two young wannabe blues songwriters to a rehearsal.

The following is taken from an article in American Songwriter by Paul Zollo, May 8, 2020 titled Behind the Song: “Hound Dog,” by Leiber & Stoller, which includes discussions from a 1992 interview with Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber that the magazine had previously published in 1992.

““AMERICAN SONGWRITER: Much of the history of “Hound Dog” has been distorted, so let’s set the record straight. It’s true you wrote it after you heard Big Mama Thornton sing?

MIKE STOLLER: In between seeing her sing and coming back to a rehearsal at Johnny Otis’ house.

Did you write it on piano?

STOLLER: No. I wrote it on my old car. [Laughs]…. So Johnny called and said, “Come over and listen to her and write some songs,” and that’s the way that happened. We went over and heard her and said, “Whoa!” We ran over to my house in my car, wrote the song, came back…

LEIBER: And we walked into Mike’s house, into the den, and he walked over – and I will never forget it, the moment is indelibly etched on my memory – he walked over to the piano, and he had a cigarette in his mouth, and the smoke was curling up into his eye, and he kept it there and he was playing, and he was grooving with the rhythm, and he was grooving, grooving, and we locked into one place. Lyrical content, syllabically, locked in to the rhythm of the piano. And we knew we had it… And he was singing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” and I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah – that’s it.”

We wrote it in about  twelve minutes. And I will never forget it. He had the smoke from this cigarette curling up into his left eye, and I was watching him….

So were you unhappy with the lyric as Elvis did it?

LEIBER & STOLLER: Yeah.
LEIBER: I didn’t like  [his] record, either. Mama’s record was it. Pete Lewis playing that guitar solo, with her screaming her heart out. That was it.””

In the recording studio, Lieber and Stoller convinced Johnny Otis to fire the drummer he had hired, and to play the drums himself:

““ STOLLER: And Jerry said, “It’s not happening. And you’ve got to get out there on the drums.”

Johnny said, “Well, who will run the session?” 

And Jerry said, “We will.”

LEIBER: It was the beginning of it. Of producing.

STOLLER: And he went, “Okay,” and he went out there and played the drums. 

We did two takes. The first one was fabulous and the second one was magnificent. [Laughs] And that was it.

And needless to say, everything was cut live. No overdubs…””

68 Years Later: Still a Blast of Fresh Moxie, Straight from Rock’s Inception

“Screaming her heart out” is still there, live. Willie Mae could be in the room with us, if we just play Hound Dog loud enough. In their youth and enthusiasm, Lieber, Stoller, and Big Mama gave us a universal message in a voice with uncanny power. As true and robust today as it ever was. Those dog-yelps at the end are still a celebration.

A remarkable and unusual series of fortunate circumstances ? Or, if there are no coincidences in the long, long multi-generational perspective of Karma, I prefer to believe that Willie Mae’s Hound Dog is a miracle with which God has blessed me — and has blessed everyone who hears that gravel-tempered voice at its resonant peak.