Hour.ca – Richard Burnett
Twenty-five years ago my father took me to my first B.B. King concert, and halfway through his set at Place des Arts, King invited butch blues legend Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton on stage to belt out a song.
The hard-drinking Thornton – who would die seven months later, on July 25, 1984, at the age of 58 – was a regular headliner at Doudou Boicel’s Rising Sun Celebrity Jazz Club across the street. “Big Mama drank her gin with milk,” Boicel recalls.
When a frail Big Mama grabbed the mic at Place des Arts, she just about blew King off the stage.