Dear John, Tomorrow is Big Mama Thornton's birthday. Her story is one of many that tell the sad tale of black Blues artists being exploited, used and abused. Her career was full of highs and some very low times. The piece was too long for one page so I'll present it two parts. It's a good read. See for yourself. Plenty to see and hear about town this week. Johnny Rawls is in town on Friday. Always a great showman and show. Nice article about Bob in Blues Blast magazine this week. Gives a lot of insight into what makes the cat tick. Nobody I know is so totally consumed with this thing we call the Blues than Bob Corritore. And I know a fair number of folks. Hard to believe it's gettin' so close to St. Nick's gig....again. It's the time of year for hugs all around. Do it!! Have a week!! Sincerely, Jim Crawford - PBS |
Big Mama By Cynthia Shearer If you want to see "Big Mama" Thornton singing the blues in her prime, look up her performance of "Ball and Chain" with Buddy Guy and his band, filmed at Boston public television station WBGH's studio in 1970, when she was forty-four. The occasion was a music show called "Mixed Bag." Thornton is a mellow mountain of a woman, almost six feet tall and topping two hundred pounds. She dwarfs the men in the band, but they seem to respect her for her size, her dignity, her burden. As she sings, they keep a soulful Southern church cadence with their feet, side to side. Her voice is beautiful, but not pretty. Sittin' by my window, whoa, I were looking out at the rain . . .She is regal and dignified in the sturdy blue pin-striped suit of indeterminate gender that appears tailored just for her, with a paisley ascot, a black fur toque, and her beloved rhinestone chandelier earrings. She even wears the two scars on her brow like scythe-shaped jewels, and she is beautiful. But she is not pretty. She draws her power from some old reservoir of human authority beyond the usual repertoires of romantic pain common to blues chanteuses: Why you want to do this mean thing to me? Thornton makes it clear: she is not unacquainted with human suffering, but she has no intention of letting it get the upper hand. Instead, she does what all blues greats do: she telegraphs endurance and force to whomever out there in TV land might need it at the moment. This is blues perfection. This is what this song was supposed to sound like, before it became Janis Joplin's signature anthem to existential dread. "Ball and Chain" is irrevocably Southern in spirit. When Big Mama sings that love can be like cold metal clamped onto a human heart, she raises both fists before her cheekbones. Those estimable fists, warding off trouble. She was known in the business as that "difficult Negro woman" who could, and would, familiarize your head with a heavyweight's right hook if she thought you were holding on to her money too long after a performance. What harm could ever befall a woman as strong as Big Mama? You can almost believe it, that old pernicious American myth that a black woman like her, or Margaret Mitchell's Mammy, or Faulkner's Dilsey, or Hollywood's black babysitter in the racist Little Audrey cartoons, is so innately strong that nobody much needs to look in on her from time to time and see to it that she is treated right. Big Mama's life puts the lie to that myth. Willie Mae Thornton was one of the crucial donors in the transfusion of black Southern blues into two separate veins of white rock & roll in America. Born in southern Alabama in 1926, she was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame the same year she died, in 1984. Although she could not read music, she was a respected colleague of Robert "Junior" Parker, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Clifton Chenier, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, B. B. King, Gatemouth Brown, Bobby "Blue" Bland, James Cotton-everybody who was anybluesbody. But Big Mama's name comes up today mostly in discussions of two songs that tethered her to white rock & roll history. "Hound Dog" was her 1953 hit that a pair of nineteen-year-old white Jewish boys named Leiber and Stoller wrote especially for her. The song was love and lateral theft; they were looking to come up with a raunchy song for her rough style, reminiscent of the street-level bite coming out of Los Angeles barrios in songs like "Chinito, Chinito." "Hound Dog" was the first moneymaker for Houston's Peacock Records, the first independent black rhythm-and-blues recording outfit. "Hound Dog" was later sucked into the rockabilly turbines of the Elvis star-making machinery when Presley began his meteoric ascent into what would prove to be decades of American enchantment with Byronic burnouts in possession of guitars. Afterward, she sometimes blurred the story enough to imply that she had been robbed of royalties or authorial credit for the song when others recorded it. Consider her testimony about "Hound Dog" to a writer from Women's Wear Daily in 1971, two days before she appeared on The Dick Cavett Show: I first saw some lines on a paper bag and I threw in a few hollers to make it go. I wish now I hadn't. Everybody else got paid but I didn't get mine. Sometimes I've gotten $50 for a whole week, singing, trying to make it. Sometimes you get the $50 . . . sometimes you didn't . . . the man would run off with it. Now you got to go and fuss with your landlord, You'll pay him next week. Maybe you'll catch the man. They taken everything but my voice. As late as 1966 Big Mama was telling Arhoolie Records producer and visionary Chris Strachwitz, "I just need a break." In many ways, Strachwitz was her big break, because he recorded her at a time when she could have easily slipped into oblivion, and she was lucky to cross paths with someone who had consecrated his life to saving samples of the kind of American music that was being swept aside by its sometimes thankless child, rock & roll. Two years later, Big Mama's own composition "Ball and Chain" had become one of Janis Joplin's signature songs, with Big Mama's blessing, after Joplin encountered Thornton singing it in the Both/And Club on Divisadero Street in San Francisco. Big Mama was one of the deacons of the blues revival of the '60s, a beloved figure on the festival circuit, beginning with her appearance at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in 1964, on into the odd mind-meld of the club scene in San Francisco. Those days seem to have been the busiest and happiest of Big Mama's life, culminating in appearances at the Fillmore, at Carnegie Hall, and into the concert halls and teatros in the great cities of Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival. Big Mama never needed Joplin's imprimatur to be somebody; she was already somebody long before Joplin hitchhiked west out of Austin.And yet, Big Mama failed to thrive in the new music scene, where white kids were fleeing the plenitude of middle-class suburbs the same way Big Mama's age cohort had fled Jim Crow. There is ample evidence that her career was profoundly compromised by her alcoholism and her attitude. There is equally ample evidence that she encountered difficulties in navigating the shoals of what was supposed to be a brave new integrated American music scene. Presley never acknowledged any debt to Big Mama for his knockoff of "Hound Dog," and she would recount an occasion when he declined to perform with her, likely out of consideration for his white Southern fan base. Over a decade later, Thornton did get songwriter credit and royalties from Joplin, who saw to it that Big Mama also benefited from Joplin's success. Thornton outlived them both, partly by never having to contend with the perils of rock & roll success.Thornton was, however, well acquainted with peril, too. She left school at age thirteen, when her mother died, and was soon plucked off a garbage truck in Montgomery by Diamond Teeth Mary, Bessie Smith's half sister, who heard her singing. At age fourteen, Thornton was remanded into the care of Sammy Green of the Atlanta-based Hot Harlem Revue, who also ran brothels on the side. After a dispute over money, she left for Houston, the Eldorado Ballroom, and then the Bronze Peacock club, under the influence of Don Robey, the Peacock recording mastermind. Texas music promoter Angus Wynne remembers Robey as the kind of man capable of weaponizing a microphone stand to exact compliance from an artist. Amidst this hostile work environment, Big Mama witnessed the suicide of one of Robey's artists, Johnny Ace, playing Russian roulette in a dressing room in 1954. When she had had enough of Robey's ways, she went west to California, where life loosened up a little and people seemed to understand who she was.
|
|
| Out & About Tuesday, December 10 Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Dirt Blonde, Chandler Wednesday, December 11 Blues Review Band, 4 p.m., Sunrise RV Resort, Surprise Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Brass Tap, Gilbert Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge, Tempe Chuck Hall, 6 p.m., Corrado's, Carefree Thursday, December 12 Mike Eldred Trio, 6 p.m., Mountain Shadows Resort, Scottsdale JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Janey's, Cave Creek Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., The Lounge, Phoenix Eric Ramsey Hosts OPEN MIC, 6 p.m., Fatso's Pizza, Phoenix Hans Olson EVERY THURSDAY, 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Arizona Blues Project, 8 p.m., Harold's, Cave Creek Friday, December 13 Johnny Rawls, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Sugar Thieves, 7 p.m., Opa Life Greek Café, Tempe JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Rags, Youngtown Innocent Joe Duo, 7 p.m., Desert Eagle Brewing Co., Mesa Tommy Grills Band, 7 p.m., West Alley BBQ, Chandler Blues Review Band, 6:30 p.m., Stone & Barrel, Sun Lakes Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., Pub Rock, Scottsdale Saturday, December 14 Soul Power Band, 9 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Innocent Joe & The Hostile Witnesses, 8 p.m., Lucky Strikes, Apache Junction Sugar Thieves, 6:30 p.m., Hyatt, Gainey Ranch, Scottsdale JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Tommy Grills Band, 7 p.m., West Alley BBQ, Chandler Nina Curri w/Mike Howard, 6 p.m., Voodoo Daddy's, Tempe Leon J, 1:30 p.m., Javelina Leap Winery, Cornville Leon J, 7 p.m., Sound Bites, Sedona Sunday, December 15 Repeat Offenders, Early Show 5:30 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Levi Platero, 9 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, 5 p.m., 10-12 Lounge, Clarkdale Nina Curri/Doug Schultze, 3 p.m., Jake's, Corner, Payson True Flavor Blues, NOON , Copper Star, Phoenix Monday, December 16
|
Jams Sunday Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John's, Phoenix Bourbon Jack's JAM w/Kody Herring, 6 p.m., Chandler The Scott O'Neal Band JAM every other Sunday, The Windsock, Prescott MONDAY Bam Bam & Badness Open JAM, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix Weatherford Hotel JAM, 6:30 p.m., Flagstaff TUESDAY OPEN JAM Hosted by Jilly Bean & The Flipside Blues Band, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix JAM Sir Harrison, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix Gypsy's Bluesday Night JAM, 7 p.m. Pho Cao, Tempe Tailgaters JAM, 7 p.m., Glendale WEDNESDAY Rocket 88s, JAM, 6 p.m., The Last Stop (Old Hideaway West), Phoenix Tool Shed JAM Party, 6 p.m. Gabby's, Mesa JAM @ The Bench, Hosted by BluZone, 7 p.m., The Bench, Tempe THURSDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix Jolie's Place JAM w/Adrenaline, 9 p.m., Chandler Friday Saturday |
GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter
|
Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 |
|
|