BIG MAMA THORNTON: “STRONGER THAN DIRT”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton checked out for good when the New Wave washed onto the music scene, dying of heart and liver failure in 1984. After fifty-seven years of hard living and a good deal of hard drinking, she was a mere shadow of herself in her last year, weighing only ninety-seven pounds. At the height of her careers, Thornton held center stage singing, drumming, and blowing harmonica with rhythm n’ blues luminaries Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Eddie Vinson, and Janis Joplin.

Her most remembered contribution to music history will always be the song “Hound Dog,” a number one hit in 1953 written especially for her by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It was as much her appearance as her blues style that influenced the writing of “Hound Dog.” “We wanted her to growl it,” Stoller later told Rolling Stone. Three years later, Elvis Presley covered Big Mama’s tune and took her signature song for his own. Like so many other black blues stars, she wasn’t mainstream enough; by 1957, her star had fallen so low she was dropped by her record label. And, like many other blues stars of the day, she was inadequately compensated for her work; although her incredible, soul-ripping rendition of “Hound Dog” sold two million copies, Big Mama received only one royalty check for $500.

Unstoppable, however, she hit the road, jamming with fellow blues masters, amazing audiences across America. Big Mama’s success came from her powerful presence on stage. She had begun performing publicly in the forties as an Atlanta teen where she danced in variety shows and in Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Review. Thornton’s own musical heroes were Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, whom she always held as great inspirations for her decision to pursue music as a career. Thornton was a completely self-taught musician who learned through watching, “I never had no one teach me nothing. I taught myself to sing and to blow the harmonica and even to play drums, by watching other people.” James Brown, Otis Redding, the Rolling Stones, and Janis Joplin helped create a resurgence of interest in the blues in the sixties. Janis covered “Ball and Chain,” making that a huge hit to millions of fans who never knew Thornton’s version. In a sad repetition of history, the royalties to Big Mama’s “Ball and Chain” were contracted to her record company, meaning she didn’t get a dime from the sales of Joplin’s cover of the tune. However, because of the popularization, artists like Big Mama began to enjoy a crossover audience, and the spotlight they had previously been denied by a record-buying public producers believed preferred black music sanitized by singers such as Presley.

With a new interest in the real thing, Big Mama started performing at blues festivals around the world, resulting in classic recordings such as “Big Mama in Europe,” and “Stronger than Dirt,” where she was backed by Muddy Waters, James Cotton, and Otis Spann. “Stronger than Dirt” featured Thornton’s interpretations of Wilson Pickett’s “Funky Broadway” and Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” Big Mama’s final albums were “Sassy Mama!” and “Jail,” a live album recorded in prisons. In 1980, Thornton, Sippie Wallace, and Koko Taylor headlined at the unforgettable “Blues Is a Woman” show at the Newport Jazz Festival. Although Big Mama barely made enough money to live on through her music, her contribution to blues was enormous. She died penniless and alone in a Los Angeles boardinghouse, decimated by drink and disappointed by her ill-treatment from the music industry. But she received tremendous respect from her peers and influences dozens of musicians, even to this day.

“At what point did rhythm n’ blues start becoming rock and roll? When the white kids started to dance to it.”

— Ruth Brown

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Badass Frida Kahlo: Frida Forever!

Sotheby’s via wikipedia

Frida Kahlo’s posthumous pop culture deification has eclipsed that of her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. A total iconoclast, Frida’s visceral painting style has an intensity matched by few artists. Her fleshy fruits, torn arteries, tortured birthings, and imago-packed surrealist dreamscapes terrify and mesmerize. Her burning eyes in both self-portraiture and photographs make her hard to forget. Her pain seems to emanate from many wounds—psychic, physical, and romantic.

Born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon outside of Mexico City in 1907, her exotic looks, which mesmerized millions, were a product of her heritage. Frida’s father, one of Mexico’s preeminent photographers, was a first-generation Mexican born of Hungarian Jews, while her mother, Matilde Calderon, was a Mexican of mixed Spanish/Indian ancestry. Frida contracted polio when she was seven; though she survived, it stunted her right leg. Her father took charge of her recovery from polio, encouraging her to play sports to build back the strength of her right foot and leg. At fifteen, Frida was in a horrendous trolley-car accident that crushed her spine, right foot, and pelvis, leaving her crippled forever. Later, she depicted the crash as the loss of her virginity when the trolley car’s handbrake pierced her young body. In pain for the remainder of her life, she underwent thirty-five surgeries, including the eventual amputation of her gangrenous right foot, and endured what she deemed as imprisonment when she was bedridden in body casts. Indeed, several of Kahlo’s greatest works were done while flat on her back, using a special easel her mother had made for her.

Her tempestuous relationship with world- renowned painter Diego Rivera was also a source of great suffering. Often described as “froglike” in aspect, the Mexican art star was quite a ladies’ man. During a hiatus in their marriage to each other, Frida hacked off her beautiful long hair and dressed in baggy men’s suits. She bitterly rued her inability to bear Rivera a child and grieved over several miscarriages. They went about making art in very different ways—Rivera’s huge paintings were political messages on the walls of public buildings; Frida’s paintings were deeply personal, vibrant colored paintings often done on tiny pieces of tin.

Frida and Diego were a very public couple. Coming of age in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, they were both very political, and counted Leon Trotsky, Pablo Picasso, Russian filmmaker Sergei Einstein, Andre Breton, and the Rockefellers among their friends. Both artists embraced “Mexicanismo,” Frida going so far as to wear traditional Indian peasant costumes at all times, cutting a striking and memorable figure with the rustic formality. Frida’s stalwart adherence to all things “of the people” made her a national shero, with papers commenting on her resemblance to an Indian princess or goddess. In his article, “Portrait of Frida Kahlo as Tehuana,” art critic Hayden Herrera asserts that the Latina artist was “unrestrained by her native Mexico’s male-dominated culture.

Tehuantepec women are famous for being stately, beautiful, smart, brave, and strong; according to legend, theirs is a matriarchal society where women run the markets, handle fiscal matters, and dominate the men.”

More than forty years after her death, Frida and her work hold a fascination that shows no sign of fading. Her dramatic personal style and wild paintings have captured the public’s imagination. She has been hailed as a role model for women artists, as well as a stylistic pioneer and idealist who pursued her craft despite physical handicaps that would have stopped many others. Her body was broken, but her spirit was indomitable, like the Tehuana women she identified with. As Herrera notes, “She became famous for her heroic ‘allegria.’ ”

This excerpt is from Badass Women Give the Best Advice by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.