Her introduction to music, as with many fellow blues legends, started in the Baptist church. The daughter of a minister, she and her six siblings began to sing at a very early age. While still a child, Willie Mae taught herself to play the drums and harmonica, and by the age of 14, she had run away from home to make her career in secular music. Career She joined Sammy Green's "Hot Harlem Revue" and toured throughout the South in the 1940's. While touring Texas in 1948