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Big Mama Thornton - Biography
Big Mama Thornton was a distinctive, powerful jump blues singer who, along with many others, had her songs “borrowed” and sanitized by “rock and roll” singers considered safer, by the establishment, for white teens, than the “colored” boogie-woogie those kids loved.
Her hit Hound Dog, about a worthless layabout of a man, was weirdly turned into a song about an actual dog, by Elvis Presley, who probably didn’t want to sing about men who only wanted him for sex and money.
Initially discouraged about that sort of hijacking of her music by the likes of Janis Joplin and Elvis (“I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about. The song is not about a dog, it’s about a man, a freeloading gigolo”), she reached another peak of success years later, recording blues albums with some of the top performers of that genre like guitar gods Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters.
Her hit Hound Dog, about a worthless layabout of a man, was weirdly turned into a song about an actual dog, by Elvis Presley, who probably didn’t want to sing about men who only wanted him for sex and money.
Initially discouraged about that sort of hijacking of her music by the likes of Janis Joplin and Elvis (“I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about. The song is not about a dog, it’s about a man, a freeloading gigolo”), she reached another peak of success years later, recording blues albums with some of the top performers of that genre like guitar gods Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters.
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