Austin Kleon — The history of Elvis’s “Hound Dog” (including him...

In The New Yorker, Louis Menand writes about the somewhat complex racial history of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”:  

It was originally released by a black R. & B. singer named Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton, in 1953, and went to No. 1 on the national R. & B. chart. But Thornton didn’t write the song. It was written by a couple of Jewish teen-agers living in L.A., Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, on commission from the producer Johnny Otis, who was recording Thornton for Peacock Records. It took them about fifteen minutes to compose it.

Leiber and Stoller thought they had written a raunchy blues number, but when they brought it into the studio Thornton insisted on crooning it. Leiber had to sing it for her so she could hear how it was supposed to go. When she was ready to record it, the drummer wasn’t making the right sound, so Otis played the drums himself (and also took co-writing credit). Otis always considered himself part of the African-American community, but in fact he was the son of Greek immigrants; his real name was John Veliotes.

As for Elvis’s cover:

Presley needed thirty-one takes to record “Hound Dog.” He didn’t cover Big Mama Thornton’s version, though. He had decided to record the song after hearing it performed by an all-white Las Vegas lounge act called Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, who had rewritten the lyrics to turn “Hound Dog” from a song about a lover who won’t go away to a song about, actually, a dog. It was a gag number, and that’s how Elvis performed it. When he sang it on “The Steve Allen Show,” Allen brought a basset hound onstage and Presley sang to the dog.

Wow. Although, I think Menand is a little misleading in that paragraph. It might be a gag number, but he really belts it out on record, and the story elsewhere goes that Steve Allen made Elvis sing to the dog: 

Here’s my personal favorite version of “Hound Dog,” with Buddy Guy backing Big Mama: 

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