Legendary Blues Singer Big Mama Thornton Is Being Inducted Into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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A rock and roll legend is getting her due.

Big Mama Thornton is among the list of artists being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside music greats such as Cher, Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Dave Matthews Band, Deadline reports. The list also includes Dionne Warwick, Peter Frampton, Ozzy Osbourne, Foreigner, Kool & the Gang, Norman Whitfield, Alexis Korner, John Mayall, MC5, and Suzanne de Passe.

Artists become eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25 years after the release of their first record. After a committee nominates an artist, music experts evaluate the nominees to decide who will be inducted.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton is best known for her version of the song “Hound Dog,” which was recorded in 1952 and seen as central to the beginning of rock and roll music, Maureen Mahon, a professor of music at New York University, told the Washington Post. Songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller were inspired to write “Hound Dog” after watching Thornton perform. Several artists covered “Hound Dog” after Thornton’s recording, but it became a #1 hit after being recorded by Elvis Presley, who first heard the song performed in 1956 by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, as History.com notes.

Many people have written about Thornton’s gender-expansive style and her unwillingness to conform to the standards of the time, often performing in a suit jacket, tie, and cowboy boots. As she got older, she refused to wear dresses, according to Lynnée Denise, author of Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters.

“She comes from a hardcore Christian background, but she has always been clear that as a publicly drinking, cursing, gender-nonconforming, super-tall woman, that she had her own relationship with gospel,” Denise told The 19th in 2023.

Thornton did not publicly identify as gender nonconforming or LGBTQ+ but critics and academics have written about Thornton as queer, especially when it comes to the importance of queerness and gender nonconformity in early rock n’ roll.

More than just the blueprint for modern Rock n' Roll, Big Mama Thornton embodied a statuesque model of unapologetic Black queerness decades ahead of her time.

“Willie Mae is not going to be out here talking about ‘I’m gender-nonconforming,’ or ‘I’m queer’ or ‘I’m lesbian,’” Denise said. “Those are things that we are projecting onto her because of how she presented physically.”

But as Denise observed, just because Thornton didn’t label herself doesn’t mean her presence can’t be understood as queer. “Queerness also is about a level of comfort with the nonnormative,” Denise noted. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sleeping with the same sex or that you can be simply clocked as lesbian because of how you present. It does mean that she modeled a refusal to adhere to what has been called traditional femininity.”

Similarly, writer Pamela Sneed wrote for Them that Thornton’s nonconformity was particularly influential to her own queerness.

“There are debates about her sexuality, but no doubt in presentation and in life she was queer,” Sneed wrote in 2023. “I think women like her gave me the permission I needed to exist.”

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Originally Appeared on them.