Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton (1926–1984) was an Alabama-born blues singer with a growl that could fill a room. Her 1952 ‘Hound Dog’ was a No. 1 R&B hit, yet she is said to have earned only a few hundred dollars from it — and she wrote ‘Ball and Chain’, later a signature for Janis Joplin, to much the same fate. She is the person the song’s fame most thoroughly erased.