Big Mama Thornton Singles Collection 1951-61 (CD)

Willie Mae \u201CBig Mama\u201D Thornton was an rhythm and blues and blues singer and songwriter, who is best-known for recording the original 1953 version of the legendary song \u201CHound Dog\u201D, which Elvis Presley famously covered. Born in Alabama in 1925, she learnt to sing in church but became a disciple of Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, moving in 1948 to Houston, Texas, a buzzing centre of jump blues, where she built a reputation as a powerful performer and signed a contract with Don Robey\u2019s Peacock Records in 1951. Working with Johnny Otis and the emerging young song writing and producing duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, she recorded their song \u201CHound Dog\u201D, and it provided her with her sole career hot, topping the US R&B charts, and becoming a landmark record.\n\nThis contains all her releases during the first decade of her career, initially for the Peacock label and then for the small Irma and Bay-Tone labels after she moved to San Francisco in tn