UK PREMIERE
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was a major figure in American popular music for forty years. From a rural Alabama background, she defied gender norms, wore jeans, a cowboy hat and boots, stood over six feet tall and weighed as much as 300 pounds. Mike Stoller tells us it was her demeanor – and the two scars on her forehead -- that inspired him and Jerry Lieber to write “Hound Dog” expressly for her. After Hound Dog became a #1 R&B hit in 1952, Big Mama scuffled for over a decade until the mid-60s, when she won acclaim in Europe as part of the American Folk Blue Festival. She was a major part of the U.S. blues revival in the late 60s and 70s; her unique style of performing, her humor and her rawness were a hit at festivals and clubs all over America and in Europe. The toughness of one of the songs she wrote, “Ball & Chain” appealed to Janis Joplin, who launched her own career with the song at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. According to biographer Lynnee Denise, Thornton lived the life of a bluesman -- the traveling, the drinking, never staying in one place, often not paid for her work – all of which took its toll on her health. Thornton died at 57 and was buried in a pauper’s grave, but not before a giving a rousing performance in Los Angeles that proved she had a presence and a voice to the very end.
Robert Clem| US| 2025| 88 min