Did you know that the most famous rock and roll song in the world was not actually written for Elvis Presley? It is true! When you think of the song “Hound Dog”, you probably picture Elvis shaking his hips and singing on stage. But four years before Elvis ever recorded it, a powerful Black blues singer named Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton sang it first.
Her version was a slow, tough blues song about a no-good man, and it was a massive hit long before Elvis put on his dancing shoes.
Big Mama Thornton recorded the song in 1952, and people loved it. Sadly, even though her record sold over half a million copies, she was paid only $500 for her work and never received any additional money from it.
Do you know this famous song? History behind ‘Hound Dog’
A few years later, Elvis heard a different band play a faster version of the song while he was visiting Las Vegas. He loved the happy, fast beat so much that he decided to start singing it at his own concerts, and the crowds went completely wild!
As Elvis became more famous, TV shows wanted him to perform the song. But one TV appearance went terribly wrong. In 1956, a show producer forced Elvis to sing “Hound Dog” to a real basset hound dog wearing a top hat on stage! Elvis found the joke silly and was deeply humiliated by the trick. The very next day, a determined Elvis went straight into a music studio to record the song his own way.
It took Elvis 31 tries to get the song exactly right. When his version was finally released, it exploded like a rocket. It stayed at number one on the music charts for 11 weeks and sold a whopping 10 million copies worldwide.
It became the song that turned Elvis into a global superstar. Even though Elvis made millions of dollars from the track while Big Mama Thornton received very little, history will always remember both of them for creating a piece of music magic that shook the world.