
JANUARY 24, 2025
Alabama Public Television’s new one-hour documentary on the life of soul singer Big Mama Thornton is now available for viewing at aptv.org, at PBS.org and on the PBS app for multiple streaming platforms.
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton (1926-1984) is perhaps most remembered for her recordings of “Hound Dog” (1953) and “Ball ‘n Chain” (1968), which later became hits for Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin. But her life and career were much more complex than the connection to the two artists that used her songs to rise to mainstream fame. Thornton's journey, which began in small town Alabama and eventually carried her across the world on the blues festival circuit, comes to life in a new documentary produced for APT by filmmaker Robert Clem.
BIG MAMA THORNTON – ALABAMA KID features rare footage of Thornton in concert, audio interviews in which she tells her own story, and videotaped interviews with record producers, managers, and fellow performers. Beyond documenting the life of the subject, this story explores the role of blues music in sustaining its culture by recording the oral histories of musicians; preserving audio and visual archives of the musicians’ lives and performances; and tracing the evolution of Alabama blues to the present time.
Robert Clem also produced the APT documentary Alabama Black Belt Blues and several other films including How They Got Over, Sink the Alabama, Big Jim Folsom: The Two Faces of Populism, and Eugene Walter: Last of the Bohemians.
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