HOUND DOG
“Hound Dog” is a twelve-bar blues song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Recorded originally by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton on August 13, 1952 in Los Angeles and released by Peacock Records in late February 1953, “Hound Dog” was Thornton’s only hit record, selling over 500,000 copies, spending 14 weeks in the R&B charts, including seven weeks at #1. The best-known version of “Hound Dog” is the July 1956 recording by Elvis Presley, which is one of the best-selling singles of all time. Presley’s version, which sold about 10 million copies globally, was his best-selling song and “an emblem of the rock ’n’ roll revolution”. It was simultaneously No. 1 on the US pop, country, and R&B charts in 1956, and it topped the pop chart for 11 weeks — a record that stood for 36 years. Both Thornton’s recording and Presley’s recording of “Hound Dog” are listed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame among the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”. (More from Wikipedia)
The song was written by the prolific songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. “Is That All There Is?” has little in common with their better known songs like “Jailhouse Rock”, “Hound Dog”, “Kansas City”, or the numerous hits by the Coasters; although songs that the two co-wrote with others, such as “Stand by Me” and “On Broadway” have some of the flavor of this song.
(January 2014)
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Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are another legendary songwriting duo, with Leiber doing the music and Stoller writing the lyrics. They wrote rock standards like “Hound Dog” and “Kansas City”, as well as the Elvis Presley hits “Love Me”, “Jailhouse Rock”, “Loving You”, “Don’t”, and “King Creole”.
(April 2015/1)
