Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984)

Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” (1956) is one of the biggest and
most instantly recognizable pop songs in history. It’s a song
so closely associated with the King of Rock and Roll, in fact,
that many may mistakenly assume that it was a Elvis original,
in fact, the story of the song that gave Presley his longest-
running #1 hit (11 weeks) in the summer of 1956 began four
years earlier, when “Hound Dog” was recorded for the very
first time by the rhythm-and-blues singer Ellie Mae “Big
Mama” Thornton in Los Angeles, California.