Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters (Music Matters)

ISBN: 1477321187

Author: Denise, Lynn

Condition: New

A queer, Black biography in essays about the performer who gave us Hound Dog, Ball and Chain, and other songs that changed the course of American music.Born in Alabama in 1926, raised in the church, appropriated by white performers, buried in an indigents grave-Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton's life events epitomize the blues-but Lynnée Denise pushes past the stereotypes to read Thorntons life through a Black, queer, feminist lens and reveal an artist who was an innovator across her four-decade-long career.Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters samples elements of Thorntons art-and, occasionally, the authors own story-to create a biography in essays that explores the life of its subject as a DJ might dig through a crate of records. Denise connects Thorntons vaudevillesque performances in Sammy Greens Hot Harlem Revue to the vocal improvisations that made Hound Dog a hit for Peacock Records (and later for Elvis Presley), injecting music criticism into whats often framed as a cautionary tale of record-industry racism. She interprets Thorntons performing in mens suits as both a sly, Little Richard-like queering of the Chitlin Circuit and a simple preference for pants over dresses that didnt have a pocket for her harmonica. Most radical of all, she refers to her subject by her given name rather than "Big Mama," a nickname bestowed upon her by a white man. It's a deliberate and crucial act of reclamation, because in the name of Willie Mae Thornton is the sound of Black musical resilience.