TS: elvis's "hound dog" vs. big mama thornton's "hound dog"

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so i finally heard the latter the other day, after years of hearing about how great it was, and the first thing i noticed was that it's a completely different song! it even has different words! people go on about how elvis "ripped off" black music, but it seems like he went out of his way here to AVOID doing that.

i always thought this was a funny song when i was little, and in some ways elvis's version almost sounds like a parody of the original. big mama is singing about a man - who the hell is elvis singing about? his dog?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 08:32 (twenty years ago)

Given the song was written by two white Jewish guys - Leiber and Stoller - you could look at the two versions as two different artificial constructs, with Elvis' white trash yelping arguably more "authentic."

Also, Elvis' version has to have the edge if only for the mindbending Jordanaires harmonies on the guitar breaks - they sound about 80!

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 08:38 (twenty years ago)

I prefer Thornton's version of this particular song, and it's hard to beat Elvis.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 08:43 (twenty years ago)

i've always preferred the elvis one too, by alot really! i might prefer "bear cat" to both of them though.

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 08:44 (twenty years ago)

there's a really hilarious alice walker story about this song you will read if you go to uga.

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 08:45 (twenty years ago)

Basically, Elvis wanted to do the song, but couldn't remember the words so made most of them up and improvised.

Leiber/Stoller got their revenge with "Jailhouse Rock"...

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 10:24 (twenty years ago)

Tie.

― Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

Pants.

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:20 (twenty years ago)

Nothing below the waist.

― Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:49 (twenty years ago)

Given the song was written by two white Jewish guys - Leiber and Stoller - you could look at the two versions as two different artificial constructs

well, all songs are artificial constructs (with the single possible exception of "let me out" by the lifers group, which i'm reasonably sure is the only authentic moment in the history of popular culture). but what does leiber and stoller's well publicized jewishness have to do with anything here? would "hound dog" be less articifially constructed if they were methodists?

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:55 (twenty years ago)

the original was done in '52, Johnny Otis played drums after the first drummer couldn't find the groove. It was apparently the first recording Lieber and Stoller actually supervised, produced.

L&S were of course archetypal hipsters, into blues and modern jazz and stuff, so it's irrelevant to me that they were Jewish. To be working with Johnny Otis in '52 seems pretty cool to me.

Elvis learned the song in Vegas from some act doing the song; this act didn't get the lyrics right and EP didn't know the original. The bit about the rabbit wasn't in the original.

I like Elvis's version better, actually; it's no great song but I like the way Elvis's version was performed better. In this book I have, "Baby That Was Rock & Roll: The Legendary Lieber and Stoller," which is OP and which features an intro by Robert Palmer, Palmer seems to say that Elvis learned the tune from the Drifters in Vegas. But this doesn't seem right. Is it? I think something was left out in the text. It references the Drifters in one paragraph and then the next one says that Elvis learned the song from "the lounge combo" in the next. Who was this lounge combo?

― es hurt (ddduncan), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 16:03 (twenty years ago)

I'll take the King's version. I saw Lieber and Stoller tell an excellent story about one of them being rescued from some famous ocean disaster (the Andrea Doria?) and the other greeting him at the pier. As Jerry(?) got out of the life raft, Mike(?) told him:

"Guess what? Hound Dog is number one!"
"Hound Dog? The Big Mama Thornton record?"
"No, some kid named Elvis Presley."

(May I say that when I opened this thread I was hoping we would have some comments from es hurt, and I was hoping he would pick EP)

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 16:11 (twenty years ago)

glad to have been around for this 'un, Ken.

that anecdote about Andrea Doria is found in the L&S book I talk about earlier. It was Stoller--the AD got rammed by another boat, the Stockholm, in a fog. Lieber rushed down to the docks to meet Stoller, and brought him a silk suit and the news that Presley had recorded "Hound Dog." That was such a shocking tune when it came out, you know--what the fuck? was the response from a world unfamiliar with Big Mamas of any kind.

― es hurt (ddduncan), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 16:15 (twenty years ago)

I prefer Big Mama Thornton's delivery -- it's just more convincing, like she's actually yelling at the dude on her porch.

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 3 February 2005 03:15 (twenty years ago)

Palmer seems to say that Elvis learned the tune from the Drifters in Vegas. But this doesn't seem right. Is it? I think something was left out in the text. It references the Drifters in one paragraph and then the next one says that Elvis learned the song from "the lounge combo" in the next. Who was this lounge combo?

freddie bell and the bellboys, according to peter guralnick. he says they had a minor hit with their version of "hound dog" in 1955, and elvis saw them several times at the sands when he went to vegas in 1956.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 3 February 2005 04:12 (twenty years ago)

They're so different as to be virtually different songs. I'll go with EP by a nose, only because it's such a blast, even today. And the Jordanaires!

― Rick Massimo (Rick Massimo), Thursday, 3 February 2005 16:47 (twenty years ago)

the elvis version is the one with the nice fucked-up guitar solo right? then that one.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 3 February 2005 16:54 (twenty years ago)

(the "close enough for jazz" one?)

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 3 February 2005 16:55 (twenty years ago)

all of Scotty Moore's gitar solos were close enough for jazz, he played some weird shit.

― es hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 3 February 2005 17:52 (twenty years ago)

Thornton's is better because it's got JOHNNY FUCKIN OTIS on it.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 3 February 2005 17:56 (twenty years ago)

close enough for jazz
I thought the story was the some notorious rock-hater like Stan Freberg said that about the solo in "Heartbreak Hotel."

peter guralnick
I like all his books that I have read, but I saw him speak once when he was promoting the Elvis bios and it was terrible. He was very defensive, protesting too much and talking too much about having to watch all the movies ("I'm not going to try to defend them!), telling boring anecdotes, totally unable to answer audience questions. I guess he does his thinking when he's writing.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:01 (twenty years ago)

Guralnick--well, I respect him in a way. But he's so reverent about the people he writes about, you know. And those two Elvis volumes are fine except they basically skimp on the music. The best thing about them is probably in the second volume, when he describes those Chips Moman sessions EP did during comeback. But overall, he misses the insanity of Elvis, I think; I mean, shit, I *like* those Elvis movie-songs, a lot of them, even better than his supposedly "great" recordings, which are great. But to hang your head and say "I don't wanna talk about the movies" just seems a total evasion of what Presley is all about. It's like saying "I like cheeseburgers but I only like them when the beef is 100% grain-fed free-range beef and with good Monterey Jack cheese from well-tended cattle, I do not like them when they come from Whataburger or White Castle and they have all this cheap catsup on them." Being a snob about hamburgers, which is what Elvis was, just seems stupid to me. It's a fucking cheeseburger, man. But Guralnick plays that game all the time in his writing; I mean I even think "classic blues" is a cheeseburger or at least a good, cheap-cut-of-pork barbecue sandwich or a whitefish sandwich on Wonder Bread with mustard out of a plastic bottle. Like people who go to Memphis to get de blooze and eat ribs at the Rendezvous, when you can go to Payne's on Lamar and get a good cheap tasty bbq sandwich and also a bean pie if you so desire...it's a lot less and no snooty waiters treating you like a tourist.

― es hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:15 (twenty years ago)

i think you're probably right about guralnick, and i don't particularly love the elvis bios. but i've pretty much given him a free pass for life because he's the entire reason i started checking out charlie rich, which went on to become one of the great musical joys of my life.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:23 (twenty years ago)

guralnick's pieces on charlie rich are amazing.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

on the other hand, the album he executive produced for charlie rich, pictures and paintings, is amazingly mediocre.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

yeah, i wish it were better.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

Hang on -- the songwriters were white, so therefore the version sung by a white man is automatically more authentic?

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:36 (twenty years ago)

yeah, that's way up there on the list of thoughtless things marcello has written.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

I think he put enough qualifiers in there that the word "automatically" is a little harsh.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 3 February 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

The offending sentence is only racist if you're going out of your way to look for it -- which unfortunately seems to be a lot of people's hobby.

― Heidy- Ho, Friday, 4 February 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

By the way, we've brought up charges of anti-semitism and racism, but what about the phrase "white trash"? Honestly, let's not stop the witch hunt without adding classism for the trifecta.

― Heidy- Ho, Friday, 4 February 2005 00:46 (twenty years ago)

Save it for the film festival, "Heidy."

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 4 February 2005 00:52 (twenty years ago)

all songs are artificial constructs (with the single possible exception of "let me out" by the lifers group, which i'm reasonably sure is the only authentic moment in the history of popular culture).

OMG I fucking kiss you for this

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

Meanwhile, back at the question: Thornton wins this one with that vicious growl of an opening.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:06 (twenty years ago)

I vote Elvis on this one, fwiw. I like Thornton's, too, though.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

The offending sentence is only racist if you're going out of your way to look for it -- which unfortunately seems to be a lot of people's hobby.

Um, he wrote two lines, and that was one of them. I didn't have to look very hard.

Also, I never said that it was a racist comment. A silly comment, yes.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:17 (twenty years ago)

at this point it hardly needs to be pointed out that marcello's a bit of a reactionary! let's move on plz!

― j blount (papa la bas), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:19 (twenty years ago)

no! we need to address how them white people been persecuted!

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 01:21 (twenty years ago)

Of course, that's why I didn't bother going on a rant about it.

xpost

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:22 (twenty years ago)

eleven years pass...

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/scotty-moore-elvis-presley-guitarist-dead-at-84-20160628

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 29 June 2016 04:31 (nine years ago)

Moore's guitar lick halfway through the verse of "Hound Dog" is the best

― ejemplo (crüt), Wednesday, 29 June 2016 14:05 (nine years ago)

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