I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Painting at the End of the Ice Age— a career retrospective of David Rosenthal’s nearly seventy works of glaciers and ice fields (with some works re-imagined from historical records) is at the Anchorage, Alaska Museum to September 14th.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this (gift) article in The Atlantic by Adam Serwer — with the ominous title, The Rise of the Right-Wing Tattletale.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Mittens the Cat— a kitteh who was accompanying a woman on an Air New Zealand flight to Australia — but she was left in the cargo hold (unseen by baggage handlers) and already on the plane’s return flight home before the airline realized it ... and Mittens had to take a third flight to be reunited (unsure if frequent flyer miles were granted).
MUSIC NOTES— a previously unreleased (and believed to be lost) song by Tina Turner has now been made available (and can be heard at the link).
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this quite lengthy (yet intriguing) look at how a prominent German newspaper underwent a thunderstorm — with its Opinion section editor resigning and many reporters protesting — after its ownership published an OpEd from Elon, supporting the country’s neo-Nazi AfD party.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Samson the Cat— a stray cat brought to an Oklahoma shelter yet had a microchip … registered in Britain … traced back to a family … who had their cat right in plain sight … leaving employees wondering how the registry was so messed up … yet Samson will soon be up for adoption.
CHEERS to the new Australian Open women’s tennis champion Madison Keys— who at age twenty-nine has left behind the label of “best player never to have won a major title” — and had to stave-off a match point during her semi-final victory.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
Reader suggested MOTHER-DAUGHTER — from 1864 House—Bishop Mariann Budde and SNL/TV star Kate McKinnon. Whaddya think?
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… in this past October’s induction ceremonies to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (with three names in the Early Influences category) I have long championed John Mayall (and last year profiled his mentor Alexis Korner). The other such inductee was the blues singer Big Mama Thornton who — along with her contemporary Koko Taylor — were the rightful successors to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith as queens of the blues singers. She had two songs of note, yet had a forty-year career that inspired a younger generation ... and thus was aptly described as an Early Influence to many.
Born as Willie Mae Thornton in 1926 in southeast Alabama, she was exposed to Gospel music in church where her father was a minister (and always retained that sound). At age thirteen, she lost her mother to tuberculosis, necessitating her going out to work.
At age fourteen, a friend recommended she try out for a talent show … in which she won a spot as a singer for Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue, being compared to a young Bessie Smith in her first big break. Then at age twenty-two, she moved to Houston, Texas where she was signed by impresario Don Robey to his Peacock label in 1951. And while Robey was an often unscrupulous businessman: one deal he made (which benefited Willie Mae Thornton) was to pair with Johnny Otis: so that Peacock artists without much exposure could tour nationwide with his revue, plus, he would arrange recordings that Robey would then distribute on Peacock.
When that revue performed at the Apollo Theater — she (as the opening act) brought down the house, with the Apollo manager insisting on giving her top billing the next night — and it is he who first popularized her as Big Mama.
The next year she released her first big single Hound Dog— with Johnny Otis playing drums on it — of which there is often confusion about. First, she did not write the song: instead, it was composed by the songwriting team of Leiber & Stoller (whom Johnny Otis sought out). Its lyrics were metaphorical; the dog being an unfaithful man (with her growling voice conveying its true meaning). It hit #1 on the R&B charts, yet was thought unacceptable for the pop charts. At this link you can hear her version.
Three years later, Elvis Presley heard a sanitized version (with lyrics changed to be about an actual canine) performed at a Las Vegas show by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, and when he sang that version: it went to #1 on the pop charts.
For a time, she adapted to the changing music scene of the 1950’s, yet was dropped by Peacock in 1957 and eventually resettled in the Bay Area. With the blues revival of the 1960’s, she often had more success in touring revues of Europe. She also gained a good deal of weight and began to wear a more gender-nonconforming style (often wearing men’s suits) at a time when that stood out.
In 1961, she recorded a song that she wrote called Ball and Chain— yet her then record company did not release it (and held onto the copyright). Six years later in 1967 she sang it at a San Francisco club, where two attendees were intrigued by it enough to ask for her blessing to record it themselves. She gave it, and Janis Joplin (along with Big Brother lead guitarist James Gurley) adapted it into a tour-de-force they recorded on their Cheap Thrills album and highlighted at that year’s Monterey Pop Festival. You can hear Big Mama Thornton’s own recording at this link, though she said of Joplin’s rendition ... “That girl feels like I do”.
In 1971 she honored her Gospel roots with the album Saved— including a rendition of Oh Happy Day. Her final recording came at the 1980 Newport Jazz Festival— where a live album release featured her, B.B. King and Muddy Waters.
Her alcoholism proved to be her undoing: she went from weighing 350 lbs. down to only 98, and Willie Mae Thornton died poor in a Los Angeles rooming house in 1984 at only age fifty-seven.
Her legacy is strong, with music journalist Ralph Gleason (later to co-found Rolling Stone magazine) declaring in 1964 that she was “the best woman blues singer alive”. Before this past year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction she was cited by the Blues Hall of Fame (1984) and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame (2020). It was her rendition of Hound Dog that was named as #318 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs list, a Grammy Hall of Fame recording (2013) and added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry (2017).
And perhaps her most enduring legacy may be the Willie Mae Rock Camp— a Brooklyn non-profit (founded twenty years after her death) to provide music/technology education to girls and gender non-conforming kids.
Besides her two classic tunes … I like her rendition of the Nick Ashford-Valerie Simpson written Let’s Go Get Stoned from 1965 (which they said in 1965 was more akin to ‘let’s go out drinking’). It was first recorded by the Coasters that year (and by country singer Ronnie Milsap later that year).
It was Ray Charles who took it to #1 on the R&B charts in 1966 (interestingly, released shortly after Ray was released from rehab after a 16-year heroin addiction). Subsequent cover versions are from performers as diverse as the Everly Brothers, James Brown, Manfred Mann, Billy Preston, Derek Trucks, plus Joe Cocker at both Woodstock and on Mad Dogs & Englishmen…. now below, Big Mama Thornton from 1969.