Hound Dog (October 28, 1956)

[jetblack]

When talking about Elvis' 1950's TV appearances, 'Hound Dog' as featured on the Milton Berle show on June 5, 1956 is a highlight and pivotal moment due to the controversy it caused at the time. When next appearing on the Steve Allen show on July 1st Elvis performance was bowlderized and tamed for the TV audience.

My personal favourite of 'Hound Dog' is the October 28, 1956 performance as featured on the Ed Sullivan show. It encompasses everything rock 'n' roll is about. It is fun, energetic, humorous and a pure joy to this fan.



Andy

[jurasic1968]

Agree with you.

[Igotstung]

The shrieks are infectious. So is the teasing, smirking, bending, clapping, wiggling star.

I love this, but like Milton Berle version better, because of the slow, humpy, bluesy ending.

[jurasic1968]

Me, too.

[jurasic1968]

Elvis did many times Hound Dog on TV shows, like Berle, Steve Allen in 1956 and Ed Sullivan (1956 and 1957), he did it again in the 1968 TV special, in the 1973 Aloha TV special and in the 1977 EIC TV special. But the best version remains to me the one from the Milton Berle show, June 1956.

[Igotstung]

Elvis did many times Hound Dog on TV shows, like Berle, Steve Allen in 1956 and Ed Sullivan (1956 and 1957), he did it again in the 1968 TV special, in the 1973 Aloha TV special and in the 1977 EIC TV special. But the best version remains to me the one from the Milton Berle show, June 1956.

The MSG version is also a hoot..

[jurasic1968]

It was different with the slow version and fast version for the time of June 1972.

[jeanno]

My favorite version is the one on the Milton Berle Show.
But the 2nd Ed Sullivan performance is a close second.

[jurasic1968]

Agree.

[Igotstung]

I like MSG version too. So playful. The audience reaction is so infectious. It is criminal that the concert was not filmed professionally.

[jurasic1968]

Elvis was asked in his June 1972 New York press conference about this. But Parker was there and gave one of his stupid answers.

[Jaime1234]

First Sullivan is my favourite, also the most watched, with 60,710,000 tuned in

[jurasic1968]

Great, but too short, in my opinion.

[ForeverElvis]

Reading some of the YouTube comments on the Ed Sullivan Hound Dog link, you get the inevitable “Elvis stole it” crap. I usually ignore but felt different this time so I posted the following on YouTube.


Hound Dog was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two white Jewish guys from Brooklyn, in 1952 and recorded by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, a black woman from Alabama, in 1953.

It was written and recorded in a Blues tempo.

So, seeing as Leiber and Stoller wrote it does that mean Big Mama stole it?

Of course not.

Hound Dog has been covered more than 250 times, does that mean that any white artists amongst those 249 artists since the original have stolen it? Or just those that had a bigger hit than the original?

Of course not, on both points.

Note - There were 10 covers before July 1956 when Elvis recorded Hound Dog.

Thornton’s Hound Dog was all over the national Blues charts between March and July 1953. Initial sales were between 500,000 and 750,000 copies. (Elvis was in his last semester of high school driving an electrician repair truck)

Don Robey was the founder of Peacock Records (a white guy). Thornton was among the artists he had signed to the label.
He paid Leiber and Stoller $1200 to write the song for Thornton (The check bounced) and paid Thornton $400-$500 as per her recording contract.

Robey registered the song for copyright in September 1952 with himself and Thornton as composers. A lie to ensure Robey got the publishing royalties on any recording of the composition. Listing Thornton as a songwriter should have gotten her thousands of dollars in royalties which Robey never paid her. He knew if she complained they’d both lose because Leiber/Stoller had written the song.

If people want to blame someone for stealing, blame Robey.

This was common in a white dominated record industry at the corporate level.

Robey was notorious for his controversial business practices; he reputedly used criminal means, including violence and intimidation, as part of his business model, though he was held in high regard by some of the musicians who worked for him. He was credited with writing or co-writing many of the songs recorded by Duke/Peacock artists, either under his real name, or under the pseudonym of Deadric Malone. However, in many cases, he was merely a publisher and was not involved in the writing. Many other label owners paid little for songs and controlled the publishing, but Robey was one of the few to disguise the real writers, making it nearly impossible to assess who wrote what on Duke, Peacock, Back Beat, and his other labels.

Thru 1953-1954 there were so many “answer” songs to hound Dog (Bear Cat by Rufus Thomas) and parodies of the original it certainly diluted sales of Thornton’s original recoding which had left the charts by Fall 1953 and sold less than a million copies. By mid-1954 the song had been correctly credited to Leiber/Stoller, who had written the song, on the many covers.

Teen Records co-founder Bernie Lowe suspected that "Hound Dog" could potentially have greater appeal, but knew it had to be sanitized for mainstream acceptance. He asked popular Las Vegas lounge act Freddie Bell of Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, who had been performing songs with "tongue-in-cheek" humour as the band in residence at The Silver Queen Bar and Cocktail Lounge at The Sands Hotel and Casino to rewrite the lyrics for their first release on his label.

Bell removed innuendoes like "You can wag your tail but I ain't gonna feed you no more" and replaced them with sanitized lyrics, changing a racy song about a disappointing lover into a song that was literally about a dog. Musically, he gave the song a rock and roll rhythm. Jerry Leiber, the original lyricist, found these changes irritating, saying that the rewritten words made "no sense". Described as "one of their trademark spoofs", the Bellboys version became a staple of their Las Vegas act.

In April of 1956, four months after his national TV debut, Elvis Presley was appearing at his first Las Vegas engagement at the New Frontier Hotel. During his time in Vegas Elvis was knocked out by the hilarious spoof Freddie Bell and the Bellboys were doing to Hound Dog.

By July 1956 Elvis had taken the rewritten lyrics, the Rock n Roll tempo, arranged it for a small Rock n Roll band and put the sex and playfulness, thru his performance, back into the recording.

It became a number 1 record across all chart genres and sold over 10 million copies worldwide (estimated)

This was not the same record as Thornton’s. It was a completely new, different song in tempo, lyrics and performance.

Any thought Elvis stole Thornton’s record is easily dismissed with some research of the facts.

Was Thornton screwed?

Yes, but by Robey.

Did Elvis do anything wrong? No.

His record came out three years after Thornton’s recording left the charts and record stores

[jurasic1968]

Agree. Great post, ForeverElvis.

[Jaime1234]

Great, but too short, in my opinion.

Agreed on both counts. But if you ask me, I say he was better dressed for the September 9 appearance. The white shoes he used in the October 28 broadcast were totally out of step with the nice green kelley jacket, the tie and the dark blue pants. In September he used the most elegant dark brown loafers I have ever seen. and as a result, did not wear a tie, which was perfect for the casual jacket and pants. Look at these shoes,man I wish I knew where they are. This is from the rehearsal, but he kept them for the live segment.

https://c7.alamy.com/comp/PMBCHN/elvis-presley-on-the-ed-sullivan-show-september-9-1956-cbs-file-reference-32914-756tha-PMBCHN.jpg