📍Ariton, AL 36311, USA
1926 – 1940“I was born Willie Mae Thornton in December 1926 in Ariton, a small farming town in south-east Alabama, the sixth of seven children of George Thornton, a Baptist minister, and Mattie, who sang in his congregation. I started singing in my father's church as a little girl, and I had a big, powerful voice. By the time I was eight I had taught myself to play the harmonica, and later the drums, and I listened to records by Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, studying how they sang. When I was a girl, my mother fell ill with tuberculosis, and I left school to help look after her. When I lost her, around 1940, I had to go to work, and at fourteen I was cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. The singer Diamond Teeth Mary heard me and encouraged me to audition for Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue, a travelling show touring the South, and they took me on. They called me the New Bessie Smith. For seven years I toured with the revue, singing, dancing and playing the drums and harmonica, learning to hold an audience. In 1948 I settled in Houston, and in 1952 I recorded Hound Dog, written for me by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, which went to number one on the rhythm and blues chart, three years before Elvis Presley made it famous. I also wrote Ball and Chain, which Janis Joplin later sang. They called me Big Mama for my size and my voice, and I sang the blues my own way, all my life.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today