As late as 1966 Big Mama was telling Arhoolie Records producer and visionary Chris Strachwitz, “I just need a break.” In many ways, Strachwitz was her big break, because he recorded her at a time when she could have easily slipped into oblivion, and she was lucky to cross paths with someone who had consecrated his life to saving samples of the kind of American music that was being swept aside by its sometimes thankless child, rock & roll. Two years later, Big Mama’s own composition “Ball and Chain” had become one of Janis Joplin’s signature songs, with Big Mama’s blessing, after Joplin encountered Thornton singing it in the Both/And Club on Divisadero Street in San Francisco. “Ball and Chain” is often cited as a synaptic leap of blues across the racial divide to rock & roll in the Great American Love and Theft Machine, direct dharma transmission during the fabled “blues revival” of the late 1960s.
Big Mama was one of the deacons of that revival, a beloved figure on the festival circuit, beginning with her appearance at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in 1964, on into the odd mind-meld of the club scene in San Francisco. Those days seem to have been the busiest and happiest of Big Mama’s life, culminating in appearances at the Fillmore, at Carnegie Hall, and into the concert halls and teatros in the great cities of Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival. Big Mama never needed Joplin’s imprimatur to be somebody; she was already somebody long before Joplin hitchhiked west out of Austin.
And yet, Big Mama failed to thrive in the new music scene, where white kids were fleeing the plenitude of middle-class suburbs the same way Big Mama’s age cohort had fled Jim Crow. There is ample evidence that her career was profoundly compromised by her alcoholism and her attitude. There is equally ample evidence that she encountered difficulties in navigating the shoals of what was supposed to be a brave new integrated American music scene.
Presley never acknowledged any debt to Big Mama for his knockoff of “Hound Dog,” and she would recount an occasion when he declined to perform with her, likely out of consideration for his white Southern fan base. Over a decade later, Thornton did get songwriter credit and royalties from Joplin, who saw to it that Big Mama also benefited from Joplin’s success. Thornton outlived them both, partly by never having to contend with the perils of rock & roll success.