Big Mama Thornton sang Hound Dog first -- three years before Elvis Presley got his hands on it and made it a cultural phenomenon. She was a big woman from Montgomery, Alabama with a bigger voice, and when she sang 'You ain't nothin' but a hound dog,' it wasn't a pop song. It was a dismissal. She got neither the credit nor the check. That happened a lot.

Willie Mae Thornton learned harmonica and drums as a teenager and joined Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue, touring the South on the chitlin circuit. Johnny Otis discovered her and brought her to Peacock Records in Houston. Hound Dog -- written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller -- was her first hit, spending seven weeks at #1 on the r&b charts in 1953. She toured with Otis, with Junior Parker, with a young Buddy Guy. Then Ball and Chain became Janis Joplin's signature song. Big Mama got a writing credit on that one, at least.

She kept performing through the 1960s and 70s, often in small clubs on the West Coast. The voice -- that rough-edged, full-throated instrument that could fill a room without a microphone -- never diminished. She died of heart and liver complications at 57, alone in a Los Angeles boarding house. Hound Dog has made hundreds of millions of dollars. Big Mama Thornton died in poverty. The voice still fills the room.

Big Mama Thornton sang Hound Dog first -- 1953, three years before Elvis. Ball and Chain became Janis Joplin's anthem. She got neither the credit nor the money. The voice was bigger than the industry that ignored her.