April 3, 2024 • 24 mins
This week our hosts Brittany and Rob look at one of the longest, craziest stories in pop music: the never-ending saga of “Hound Dog.” Big Mama Thornton came out with this massive R&B belter in 1952 and was the first hit from the legendary writing team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. The song comes in at #318 on the list, and instantly became a cultural phenomenon, inspiring countless cover versions, answer songs, rewrites and sequels in blues, pop, and country. The most notable was Elvis Presley’s version of Hound Dog” in 1956, but he wasn’t covering Big Mama Thornton’s song – these were two very different tunes with the same title, and the only thing they had in common was the opening line, “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog.”
In this episode, Brittany and Rob dive deep into the secret history of “Hound Dog” and why time has simplified the story to being between Big Mama and Elvis. Rolling Stone senior writer Angie Martoccio also joins us to look at the song and its complex cultural afterlife. Together we celebrate the greatness of Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, and the incredible power of her “Hound Dog”. For a song that’s continued to change constantly throughout the past 70 years after it first became a hit, there’s really no other story in music history like this one. From Jimi Hendrix to Doja Cat, we look at how “Hound Dog” keeps on inspiring sequels and likely will for the rest of history.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on
Rolling Stones, hugely popular, influential and sometimes controversialist. I'm Britney Spanis.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And I'm Rob Sheffield, and we're here to shed light
on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes
them so great.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So today we have a great song that kind of
exemplifies some of the changes that have happened between the
original list and the new one. We'll be discussing Hown
Dog by Big Mamma Thornton. And this song was not
on the original list. The version that was on the
original list was Elvis Presley's version, the version that a
lot of people may be most familiar with or heard first,
(00:35):
and it ranked it number nineteen on the original list,
and it's the highest ranking song to not appear on
the twenty twenty one list at all. And now we
have Big Mamma Thornton's the nineteen fifty three recording of
it clocks in at number three eighteen for its debut
on the five hundred Greatest Songs. So this is a
change that's pretty reflective of a lot of public sentiment
(00:58):
around Elvis, very specifically. Right, there's a lot of changes
in our own our experience of Elvis as listeners, our
experience of Elvis a as a icon has changed dramatically
since the list first came out, and I think by
twenty twenty one, Prior to, of course, the two movies
made about his life, We've come Back and come out
(01:19):
in recent years, have changed public perception in different ways.
The kind of the legacy of Elvis was dwindling, and
I think people just weren't as interested in the songs
that he popularized that were made originally by black artists
and found those versions to be better and different.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
The twenty twenty list, the fifties pioneers got lost on
that list. They didn't have a lot of expertise or
a lot of enthusiasm for music from the fifties, So
so many of the fifties pioneers who were huge on
the previous list really got slept on for the later version.
People like Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley
(01:58):
and Sam Cook, they all had a lot less presence
on the new one, and for whatever reason that the
voters didn't know or care much about that particular era
of music.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, because I feel like I didn't really even in
my ballot, and I was very much focused on like
some of the newer songs or like pop and dance
songs that came out prior to even the original list
that didn't make it. But yeah, I feel like I
didn't really think too much. I guess I sort of
assumed that those kind of songs that have always been
sort of the ground zero of the canon and would
(02:30):
make it. But yeah, it's also like pretty shocking that
a lot of them sort of weren't a big of
a part of people's own ballads and thinkings of what
are the greatest songs of all time.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, it's really interesting when you think of like a
song as classic as big example of long Taul Sally,
the classic song by Little Richard that was number fifty
five on the previous version of the list, it didn't
even make the list this time. Yeah, there are lots
of songs that were in the top one hundred that
completely dropped off the list, songs that are really foundational
(03:01):
for pop music ever since, and those in general got
slept on and the Elvis songs are definitely part of
that that. Ray Charles songs are definitely part of that.
It's just a diminished interest for these voters in that period.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah. I mean even the fact that the big Mama
Thorton version comes in so low in coming at three
eighteen is pre striking that it's not even in the
top one hundred or doesn't make it there.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, I mean there's hardly any Doop on the list.
Earth Angel isn't on the list, which is kind of
mind blowing when you think of it.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, And I wonder why or when that happened. I
guess people's interest in sort of sixties rock and roll
sort of got lost. I feel like there's so much
of a nostalgia for it. When I was younger thinking
about just kind of the popularity of rockabilly and even
just the look of kind of like fifties kind of
greaser style was so big, with a lot of artists
(03:57):
who were emulating that, even if they weren't necessarily making
music that sounded like that. But I feel like there
hasn't been as many people kind of bringing in that legacy.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, it's wild, how I think, for a lot of
the stuff from that period is so much great wild
music from that period that to a large exment was
out of print and unfindable. Unless you are a hardcore
collector for many, many years. Yeah, So I think it's
a cyclical thing where just the sheer abundance of great
(04:27):
pop music, great R and B, great do wop, great
rock and roll from that period. It comes and goes,
but it always circles back around because it's just so intense. Certainly,
I think Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Presley,
Sam Cook. These are artists who their innovations still make
(04:47):
them a presence in pop music. But so many of
the more forgotten pioneers from that period, like Big Mama
Thornton or Roy Brown or Wenoni Harris, I feel like
they're her biggest public discovery has yet to come.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, I feel like we're definitely overdue, and I think
is still kind of on the way to that. Especially
the great sort of blues women. I think are very
much coming into a kind of public reckoning with the
fact that their memories in their careers are so much
lost to history. And I mean with Big Mama Thornton's version,
(05:25):
she had the original take on Leeburn Stoler's song. They
wrote it because they were introduced to her by Johnny Otis,
and they wanted to make something that was just as
gruff as she was that really emulated a lot of
who she was as a present. She was like this
really kind of intense kind of person and who had
this like very like sexual stage performance, who was very
(05:48):
gender nonconforming in a lot of ways. She didn't really
adhere to a lot of what people expected of women
in music at the time, especially black women in music.
And there's so much to her that was just like powerful.
And they want to song that she could really growl on,
which I love, And I was like reading a story
that she wasn't performing it that way at first on
the recording, and so they were kind of like scared
(06:08):
to tell her to do it more like this way
that they had intended the song to be sung, So
one of them had to like do an imitation of
it to like get her to understand that. They're like,
we want you to growl more. We want you to
like not do like the like kind of like pretty
voice like you know, performance on it, which I love
that they kind of had to to do their own
kind of take on it, which I want to hear,
like Leehburn Stoller's kind of imitation of Big Mama Thornton
(06:31):
doing it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was funny, and she had so many great songs
that are ripe for rediscovery. And I think once people hear,
you know, Willie May's Blues or just Can't help Myself,
people are going to hear there's a lot more to
Willie May Thornton, Big Mama Thornton than they previously realized.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, I mean, and there's such like a clear through
line of I mean, like even just beyond of course
R and B to rock and roll, and like Hot
Dog being so much the bridge between black R and
B and early rock and roll before Romans, but just
like thinking of the history of black women in music
and how there's like such a through line even from
Big Mama Thornton to you know, a lot of like
(07:08):
motown girl groups to like seventies kind of you know,
I think of like Betty Davis and of Donna Summer
and kind of like the sexuality that they really just
like emanated in their songs and their vocals and were
able to do so seamlessly, and kind of the rawness
of Tina Turner of course is so much a part
of that. And you get to someone like Beyonce, who
has always really honored a lot of that history, and
(07:30):
of course she has like when the levee breaks, don't
hurt yourself on Lemonade and kind of helps like give
a resurgence in that way to the great blues women
who came before her and kind of inspired what it
means to be a black woman performing and kind of
freed up what that means for a lot of artists.
Is just so incredible.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Absolutely, anybody who hasn't read Britney's essay on that particular
Beyonce song should drop everything you're doing and read it.
It's one of my favorite things written about not just Beyonce,
but about the entire long history of pop music. This
is Beyonce taking a song that everybody is familiar with
from the more recent versions when the Levee Breaks, and
(08:10):
connecting it to the whole history of Memphis Mini and
that Jack White, who definitely knows this history, is like
very much involved in this song. Everything about that song
is just it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, And I think you know, for the Boz Luhrman
Elvis movie, of course, there's a Doosha Cat version of
hound Dog which samples very prominently Big Mama Thornton's version.
I mean so, I mean, especially for this type of
like shiny biopic about Elvis, to kind of make sure
to shine a light on her and have this big
hit single with it. I think for a lot of people,
even after the list has come out, you know, has
(08:43):
allowed them to learn more about Big Mama Thornton, to
kind of be exposed to her performance of it, because
you can hear so much of that in music today
and you can still hear that. I mean, there is
nothing more for a lot of these blues women, there
was nothing more punk rock or transgressive or rock and
roll than who they were. Like, they were definitely not
adhering to any roles that were set for them and
any roles of performance, of being an artist and of
(09:07):
just what was expected of them, and that's like kind
of the purest form of rock and roll energy and
performance and all of that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Absolutely. Yeah, it's so wild. How as soon as you know,
hound Dog comes out in fifty two, it's a massive hit.
And one of the amazing things is that from the
very beginning people are rewriting this song. Everybody who hears
this wants to do their own version, wants to add
their own thing to the story. It's like, you know,
classic hip hop example like Roxanne Roxanne, whereas song just
(09:37):
transforms because so many people are doing different versions of
the story from different angles. And so right from the
beginning with Houndog you have so many artists, artists who
are name artists, or artists who are obscure artists, artists
from every genre, every part of the country, but they're
doing their answer song to Hounddog And it's wild that
(10:01):
people fixate on the Big Mama Thornton version and the
Elvis version, and there's so much more to this story
that You've got Rufus Thomas, who's already a legend in
Memphis at this point, doing bear Cat, which is an
explicit answer song Sun Records, and Sam Phillips thought he
was going to take the writing credit. Lieber and Stoller
(10:22):
weren't going to let that happen. Roy Brown doing his
great you know, mister hound Doggs comes to town like
and these are artists who were around before Big Mama Thornton,
but they're inspired by her song. They want to take
it somewhere new. And it was so wild that for
Leeburn Stoller, who wrote this, like you said, specifically for
(10:43):
Willie May Thornton, that they had no way of knowing
that this song was about to begin, this whole story
with all these different people doing all these different versions
of it, and that it became sort of a cross cultural,
cross generational dialogue.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah. Yeah, and I think like getting back to like
the the roots of the song and gain to sort
of i know, people learning more about these histories and
sort of the kind of like little like Micro's sonic
universes that these kind of created, you know, even with
the song. And I mean, this is just like a
problem in the music industry that goes well beyond Hound
(11:17):
Dog and Big Mama Thornton. And of course there was
a lot of legal issues over these songs and a
lot of lawsuits that kind of went between Lee Burne
Stolen a lot of these artists and other writers who
were kind of doing different takes on it. But I mean,
I was reading how Big Mama Thornton only made five
hundred dollars on her version, which was a big hit
when it came out. Of course, like Elvis's version a
few years later, would end up, you know, because he's
(11:39):
a white man doing this song, and kind of you know,
everyone's really attracted to him and all this other stuff
that kind of came with his successive Houndog A lot
of her history got very quickly washed away in that
and so it's really insane to think about the fact
that she I mean, I guess not insane thinking about
the music industry, but like you know, she made five
hundred dollars was it on the song?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah? Well, a huge turning point in the nineties when
the CD reissue boom and there's a compilation they call
me Big Mama, and that's the early nineties, and that
was the first time that there was an album CD
that was Big Mama Thornton that people could go into
the store and buy. Because everybody knew the story that
there was this version of Hounddog. People didn't know about
(12:24):
all the different versions at that point because history had
been so simplified. But this is the first time that
people could actually hear this Big Mama Thornton version that
they heard so much about. It was funny that three
things are apparent right away. First, it's phenomenal the guitar.
Oh my god, we could know Pete guitar Lewis is
such a monster in this song. It sounds nothing like
the Elvis version, Completely different songs, nothing in common except
(12:48):
for the first line and the title, and they're completely
different lyrics, completely different chords, structure, beat, everything. But also
Big Mama Thornton had so many other songs and that
this is an even her best song, just Can't Help
Myself is even better Big Mama Thornton's song Willie May's Blues,
which is in which she wrote, you know, she wrote
(13:09):
like plenty of her own material. Yeah, And of course
she wrote the song that became very famous for Janis
Joblin career making song, Beall and Chain, and that was
a song that she wrote and recorded very late in
her career that you know, became a legendary song. But
it's wild that there's so much to Big Mama Thornton's
story way beyond this song, and that this song is
(13:31):
so much more than just a back and forth between
Big Mama Thornton and Elvis. It's just fascinating to see
how much music that she was a part of, in
the whole genres that she was a part of.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah, I mean even just like listening to the recording now,
I mean she just sounds like so that's just like
such a great vocal performance, like such a perfect vocal
performance happening on like I mean, all of her music,
but I mean with this one, it's just so funny
to like listen to her version and then like you know,
the Frankie Bell and the Bell Boys and like Elvis
Presley versions, and it's like her, like her vocals on
(14:04):
it are just like so explosive and so just kind
of like really get under your skin. The way that
she can growl on a song. It's just so perfect.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
It's really amazing. But when she's doing the column response
between her voice and Pete guitar Lewis's guitar, it's really outstanding.
And even in the context of what people were doing
in R and B in the early fifties, you could
definitely see why this song was like such a massive
R and B hit nationally, which was rare for R
(14:33):
and B at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, And I also I had forgotten about the ball
and Chain Chance Joplin connection for the longest.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
It's wild. Yeah, it's the Bay Area, it's the sixties
and Jennis Joplin and her friends in the band Big
Brother they are going to see Big Mama Thornton. Of course,
she's a legendary singer at this point, like she's not rich,
but like people know her and know her work. And
she does this song Ball and Chain that she wrote
and Jennis Choplin like goes over and talks to her
(15:01):
and she's like, where did that song come from? Like
and yeah, mam Threne said, you know, like just wrote
it and that became the career making song. That's a
song that Janis Joplin does at the Monterey Pop Festival
that everybody who's there is like, who the hell is this?
And you see that footage in the Monterey Pop movie
and it completely mind blowing performance. The great scene where
(15:24):
cass Elliott is watching and you just see cass Elliot
and the crowd going wow. You know so much comes
from just that amazing performance of that amazing song. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, I think we're very, very overdue for like a
big Mama Thornton movie, like a great book, like it's
something about her, Like I feel like people are gonna
I feel like it's gonna come.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah. I'm curious, like what will happen in I mean,
it's inevitable that there will be a redux of the
of the list in the future and of course there's
you know, the resurgence that Elvis is having in a
more like aesthetic way right now, Like that's not necessarily
about his music, but like very much about the look
(16:06):
and kind of the the you know, problematic love story
with Priscilla and like the tragedy of the family and
all that stuff. And I'm curious kind of like, i mean,
all these things are so cyclical, right Like it's like
everything kind of comes back in waves that I'm wondering
like when, if, and if like there will be this
kind of fifties resurgence of like this style of music.
(16:30):
I mean thinking even just like of course the nineties
there is like Buddy Holly by Weezer, and then thinking
even going into the early two thousands, which I love
that Jacob already brought this up in his interviews the
about Priscilla where he was like his his encounter with
Elvis was through Lee Lo and Stitch and like Stitch
stressing out of Elvis, like these like kind of weird
moments that brought all that back. Like I'm wondering if
(16:52):
that if the product of this Elvis resurgence is kind
of naturally leading into that maybe or it stops with
Elvis or.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
I think it doesn't stop with Elvis and it continues. Honestly,
people still, I mean, people are just now discovering Big
Mama Thornton. I feel like they will discover Roy Brown.
I know I'm talking about Roy Brown a lot. I'm
a huge fan. Love Don't Love Nobody is just to me.
That's a song that you hear. That you hear Little
(17:22):
Willie John, you hear Wenny Harris, you hear Nellie Lutcher.
There are so many amazing voices from this period that
are just still right to be rediscovered or discovered for
the first time. Yeah, And I feel like hopefully the
Big Mama Thornton, that the resurgence of interest in her
will just people will keep going with that amazing period
(17:43):
of late forties early fifties R and B.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And next up, we're gonna have Angie Martosio talk about
hound Dog with us a little bit. Thank you so much,
Angie for joining us to talk about hon Dog today.
Curious sort of when you first heard any version of
the song.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, it's called Grease. It's a really good film. You
should like catch it out sometime. Also, just want to
point out I was a kid watching that, so I
didn't know that it was like filmed later. I thought
it was like in the fifties, so I didn't understand
that sometimes a movie is like set at a certain
time at all. So to me, I was like John
(18:22):
Travolda's been around for a while, he had this movie.
He was in the fifties, Like what's going on? But anyway,
hearing that song at that time was definitely my introduction,
and I would say, you know, I'm not a diehard
Elvis fan, and it's one of the songs that I'm
not sick of. It's awesome, it's great. I never get
tired of it.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And did you hear the big Mama Thornton version much
later or with it much later?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Which is crazy? You know, that was like a landmark
nineteen fifty three hit, and it was such a big
deal at the time, and it makes you know, I'm
not surprised with our treatment of how things were then
that it's just completely forgotten. But I am really glad
about the last like five years or so, and that
it's come back and that it was on our list.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, and the writers were so young when they worked
on it. I didn't realize they're nineteen when they wrote it.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, Leeber and Stoller were like, they're these two kids
in their early twenties. They're Jewish music nerds. They're obsessed
with black culture and it's so insane to me, Like
the amount of like drama and history that happens with
Hounddog is so crazy, and I think they're a huge
part of it, and they're often overlooked and not discussed.
(19:32):
And yeah, they wrote that song. Yeah, and they did
not like Elvis's version at first. Yeah, which is so crazy,
they said, was the line like it doesn't have the
groove that Big Mama Thornton.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Had, which is and the rest of their lives complaining
about it. Yess very funny how they were always outraged
that this song that was allegedly there was so famous
for Elvis in a totally different version.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
The unsung hero this whole story is Freddy Bell, who
sadly even said, like, I hope my career is not
some up by like giving Elvis hound Dog, Which is
so sad that Elvis went to Vegas for the first
time saw them perform that version, the rabid version I
call it, and he's that's the version that he took
so it's so crazy to me that now it's boiled
(20:16):
down between like Elvis and Big Mama against each other,
when it was never like that to begin with.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean even just so, as Rob
and I discussed earlier in the episode, the history of
hound Dog and the fact that on the five hundred
Great Songs List, of course it is the highest ranking
song from the two thousand and four list to disappear
from the twenty twenty one list, and of course we
have Big Mom and Thornton's version on the newer list,
and even just the history of how kind of public
(20:43):
sentiment about Elvis has changed so much over I mean
over our kind of like from our childhoods to now,
and like from like even the last two years of
Elvis have changed so much. I mean, it's kind of
fascinating to think about how the ebbs and flows have
existed of Elvis as like the king of rock and
roll and what that means and kind of whether that
(21:04):
stands still and like how how that's completely changed even
before this.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
List, And it does post the question right of like
future lists, like will that Elvis version come back on
the list? Like I think about that too. With the
fact that he's gaining such a huge fan base from children.
It's absolutely bonkers to me how huge he's become. Obviously,
the movies were a big deal and part of that,
but it's also just the fact that he's, sorry to
(21:30):
put it so bluntly, like Elvis is cool now and
he was not that cool like ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
There's a great piece that I remember David Brown Arcola,
David Brown wrote about Elvis's estate trying to get him
to be relevant again or to keep that legacy going.
No one wanted to engage with Elvis. Like a lot
of younger fans obviously found him gross and Skivie rightfully
for marrying a teenager, and he properated a lot of
black culture and like a lot of black artists were
(21:55):
lost in the process of him becoming really famous. And
I think there was a lot of of that sort
of disdain for him, and so it's really fascinating how
that still exists, Like that conversation is ongoing. But he
also there's so many people that are really really young
people who love him because of this movie, or like
love the lore of Elvis or the aesthetic of Elvis,
(22:17):
because of both this movie and the Sofia Coppola Priscilla,
which are again very like high aesthetic directors kind of
doing takes on Elvis.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
But it's wild that, like you were saying, that this
story keeps changing, keeps evolving. Every generation, every fan base,
every culture, every new wave of Elvis fans rediscovers the
Elvis universe and has a new Elvis of their own.
It's really amazing how many, how everybody's got their own
(22:47):
different Elvis.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, and I think, you know, Priscilla came out and
it was a little bit how is this going to
be perceived, you know, especially competing with Elvis the movie,
and I thought that was kind of a polite that
I could have been a lot worse. I left the
movie loving it. Obviously, I love Sophia Coppola. I as
someone who's read the book Priscilla, it's very different, and
(23:11):
I think it was a pretty polite. Let's say, it
could have been a lot worse.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
And it seems like it's also like a sort of
stylistic thing. Obviously, like a lot of people like love
that kind of look that he had and the look
that Priscilla had, like and you know, that kind of
comes with it the music. I'm kind of intrigued by
how that will shake out with it because there was
sort of a new interest in Big Mama Thornton's version
(23:36):
because of the Doja Cat song that used that sample
Big Mamma Thorton's original version of of hound Dog and
that was part of the soundtrack that was a huge hit.
So that kind of, you know, thankfully, brought a lot
more light to her and too kind of like the
history of the song. And of course she plays a
part in the movie as well. So I'm kind of
curious because I wonder if the songs will have that
(23:58):
life again, or if this will change the list once more.
I wonder if in like ten years, you know, and
we have a batch of younger critics and writers and
people who you know, loved this these movies or found
them fascinating that way will change it too.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Yeah, I absolutely can't wait to hear. And the last
thing I want to add is just that Lana del
Rey was right the whole time, you know, like that
Priscilla hairstyle is great and it's taken people years to
catch up with her.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I mean, there's a lot we need to catch up
on with with Lanna.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
That's very true.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Well, thank you so much, Angie for me, Thank you always.
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred
Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling
Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me, Britney Spanos.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And Rob Sheffield, Executive.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale and Christian Horde, and
produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Zeiler.
Thanks for watching, and thanks for listening.
Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on
Rolling Stones, hugely popular, influential and sometimes controversialist. I'm Britney Spanis.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And I'm Rob Sheffield, and we're here to shed light
on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes
them so great.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So today we have a great song that kind of
exemplifies some of the changes that have happened between the
original list and the new one. We'll be discussing Hown
Dog by Big Mamma Thornton. And this song was not
on the original list. The version that was on the
original list was Elvis Presley's version, the version that a
lot of people may be most familiar with or heard first,
(00:35):
and it ranked it number nineteen on the original list,
and it's the highest ranking song to not appear on
the twenty twenty one list at all. And now we
have Big Mamma Thornton's the nineteen fifty three recording of
it clocks in at number three eighteen for its debut
on the five hundred Greatest Songs. So this is a
change that's pretty reflective of a lot of public sentiment
(00:58):
around Elvis, very specifically. Right, there's a lot of changes
in our own our experience of Elvis as listeners, our
experience of Elvis a as a icon has changed dramatically
since the list first came out, and I think by
twenty twenty one, Prior to, of course, the two movies
made about his life, We've come Back and come out
(01:19):
in recent years, have changed public perception in different ways.
The kind of the legacy of Elvis was dwindling, and
I think people just weren't as interested in the songs
that he popularized that were made originally by black artists
and found those versions to be better and different.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
The twenty twenty list, the fifties pioneers got lost on
that list. They didn't have a lot of expertise or
a lot of enthusiasm for music from the fifties, So
so many of the fifties pioneers who were huge on
the previous list really got slept on for the later version.
People like Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley
(01:58):
and Sam Cook, they all had a lot less presence
on the new one, and for whatever reason that the
voters didn't know or care much about that particular era
of music.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, because I feel like I didn't really even in
my ballot, and I was very much focused on like
some of the newer songs or like pop and dance
songs that came out prior to even the original list
that didn't make it. But yeah, I feel like I
didn't really think too much. I guess I sort of
assumed that those kind of songs that have always been
sort of the ground zero of the canon and would
(02:30):
make it. But yeah, it's also like pretty shocking that
a lot of them sort of weren't a big of
a part of people's own ballads and thinkings of what
are the greatest songs of all time.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, it's really interesting when you think of like a
song as classic as big example of long Taul Sally,
the classic song by Little Richard that was number fifty
five on the previous version of the list, it didn't
even make the list this time. Yeah, there are lots
of songs that were in the top one hundred that
completely dropped off the list, songs that are really foundational
(03:01):
for pop music ever since, and those in general got
slept on and the Elvis songs are definitely part of
that that. Ray Charles songs are definitely part of that.
It's just a diminished interest for these voters in that period.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah. I mean even the fact that the big Mama
Thorton version comes in so low in coming at three
eighteen is pre striking that it's not even in the
top one hundred or doesn't make it there.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, I mean there's hardly any Doop on the list.
Earth Angel isn't on the list, which is kind of
mind blowing when you think of it.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, And I wonder why or when that happened. I
guess people's interest in sort of sixties rock and roll
sort of got lost. I feel like there's so much
of a nostalgia for it. When I was younger thinking
about just kind of the popularity of rockabilly and even
just the look of kind of like fifties kind of
greaser style was so big, with a lot of artists
(03:57):
who were emulating that, even if they weren't necessarily making
music that sounded like that. But I feel like there
hasn't been as many people kind of bringing in that legacy.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, it's wild, how I think, for a lot of
the stuff from that period is so much great wild
music from that period that to a large exment was
out of print and unfindable. Unless you are a hardcore
collector for many, many years. Yeah, So I think it's
a cyclical thing where just the sheer abundance of great
(04:27):
pop music, great R and B, great do wop, great
rock and roll from that period. It comes and goes,
but it always circles back around because it's just so intense. Certainly,
I think Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Presley,
Sam Cook. These are artists who their innovations still make
(04:47):
them a presence in pop music. But so many of
the more forgotten pioneers from that period, like Big Mama
Thornton or Roy Brown or Wenoni Harris, I feel like
they're her biggest public discovery has yet to come.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, I feel like we're definitely overdue, and I think
is still kind of on the way to that. Especially
the great sort of blues women. I think are very
much coming into a kind of public reckoning with the
fact that their memories in their careers are so much
lost to history. And I mean with Big Mama Thornton's version,
(05:25):
she had the original take on Leeburn Stoler's song. They
wrote it because they were introduced to her by Johnny Otis,
and they wanted to make something that was just as
gruff as she was that really emulated a lot of
who she was as a present. She was like this
really kind of intense kind of person and who had
this like very like sexual stage performance, who was very
(05:48):
gender nonconforming in a lot of ways. She didn't really
adhere to a lot of what people expected of women
in music at the time, especially black women in music.
And there's so much to her that was just like powerful.
And they want to song that she could really growl on,
which I love, And I was like reading a story
that she wasn't performing it that way at first on
the recording, and so they were kind of like scared
(06:08):
to tell her to do it more like this way
that they had intended the song to be sung, So
one of them had to like do an imitation of
it to like get her to understand that. They're like,
we want you to growl more. We want you to
like not do like the like kind of like pretty
voice like you know, performance on it, which I love
that they kind of had to to do their own
kind of take on it, which I want to hear,
like Leehburn Stoller's kind of imitation of Big Mama Thornton
(06:31):
doing it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was funny, and she had so many great songs
that are ripe for rediscovery. And I think once people hear,
you know, Willie May's Blues or just Can't help Myself,
people are going to hear there's a lot more to
Willie May Thornton, Big Mama Thornton than they previously realized.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, I mean, and there's such like a clear through
line of I mean, like even just beyond of course
R and B to rock and roll, and like Hot
Dog being so much the bridge between black R and
B and early rock and roll before Romans, but just
like thinking of the history of black women in music
and how there's like such a through line even from
Big Mama Thornton to you know, a lot of like
(07:08):
motown girl groups to like seventies kind of you know,
I think of like Betty Davis and of Donna Summer
and kind of like the sexuality that they really just
like emanated in their songs and their vocals and were
able to do so seamlessly, and kind of the rawness
of Tina Turner of course is so much a part
of that. And you get to someone like Beyonce, who
has always really honored a lot of that history, and
(07:30):
of course she has like when the levee breaks, don't
hurt yourself on Lemonade and kind of helps like give
a resurgence in that way to the great blues women
who came before her and kind of inspired what it
means to be a black woman performing and kind of
freed up what that means for a lot of artists.
Is just so incredible.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Absolutely, anybody who hasn't read Britney's essay on that particular
Beyonce song should drop everything you're doing and read it.
It's one of my favorite things written about not just Beyonce,
but about the entire long history of pop music. This
is Beyonce taking a song that everybody is familiar with
from the more recent versions when the Levee Breaks, and
(08:10):
connecting it to the whole history of Memphis Mini and
that Jack White, who definitely knows this history, is like
very much involved in this song. Everything about that song
is just it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, And I think you know, for the Boz Luhrman
Elvis movie, of course, there's a Doosha Cat version of
hound Dog which samples very prominently Big Mama Thornton's version.
I mean so, I mean, especially for this type of
like shiny biopic about Elvis, to kind of make sure
to shine a light on her and have this big
hit single with it. I think for a lot of people,
even after the list has come out, you know, has
(08:43):
allowed them to learn more about Big Mama Thornton, to
kind of be exposed to her performance of it, because
you can hear so much of that in music today
and you can still hear that. I mean, there is
nothing more for a lot of these blues women, there
was nothing more punk rock or transgressive or rock and
roll than who they were. Like, they were definitely not
adhering to any roles that were set for them and
any roles of performance, of being an artist and of
(09:07):
just what was expected of them, and that's like kind
of the purest form of rock and roll energy and
performance and all of that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Absolutely. Yeah, it's so wild. How as soon as you know,
hound Dog comes out in fifty two, it's a massive hit.
And one of the amazing things is that from the
very beginning people are rewriting this song. Everybody who hears
this wants to do their own version, wants to add
their own thing to the story. It's like, you know,
classic hip hop example like Roxanne Roxanne, whereas song just
(09:37):
transforms because so many people are doing different versions of
the story from different angles. And so right from the
beginning with Houndog you have so many artists, artists who
are name artists, or artists who are obscure artists, artists
from every genre, every part of the country, but they're
doing their answer song to Hounddog And it's wild that
(10:01):
people fixate on the Big Mama Thornton version and the
Elvis version, and there's so much more to this story
that You've got Rufus Thomas, who's already a legend in
Memphis at this point, doing bear Cat, which is an
explicit answer song Sun Records, and Sam Phillips thought he
was going to take the writing credit. Lieber and Stoller
(10:22):
weren't going to let that happen. Roy Brown doing his
great you know, mister hound Doggs comes to town like
and these are artists who were around before Big Mama Thornton,
but they're inspired by her song. They want to take
it somewhere new. And it was so wild that for
Leeburn Stoller, who wrote this, like you said, specifically for
(10:43):
Willie May Thornton, that they had no way of knowing
that this song was about to begin, this whole story
with all these different people doing all these different versions
of it, and that it became sort of a cross cultural,
cross generational dialogue.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah. Yeah, and I think like getting back to like
the the roots of the song and gain to sort
of i know, people learning more about these histories and
sort of the kind of like little like Micro's sonic
universes that these kind of created, you know, even with
the song. And I mean, this is just like a
problem in the music industry that goes well beyond Hound
(11:17):
Dog and Big Mama Thornton. And of course there was
a lot of legal issues over these songs and a
lot of lawsuits that kind of went between Lee Burne
Stolen a lot of these artists and other writers who
were kind of doing different takes on it. But I mean,
I was reading how Big Mama Thornton only made five
hundred dollars on her version, which was a big hit
when it came out. Of course, like Elvis's version a
few years later, would end up, you know, because he's
(11:39):
a white man doing this song, and kind of you know,
everyone's really attracted to him and all this other stuff
that kind of came with his successive Houndog A lot
of her history got very quickly washed away in that
and so it's really insane to think about the fact
that she I mean, I guess not insane thinking about
the music industry, but like you know, she made five
hundred dollars was it on the song?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah? Well, a huge turning point in the nineties when
the CD reissue boom and there's a compilation they call
me Big Mama, and that's the early nineties, and that
was the first time that there was an album CD
that was Big Mama Thornton that people could go into
the store and buy. Because everybody knew the story that
there was this version of Hounddog. People didn't know about
(12:24):
all the different versions at that point because history had
been so simplified. But this is the first time that
people could actually hear this Big Mama Thornton version that
they heard so much about. It was funny that three
things are apparent right away. First, it's phenomenal the guitar.
Oh my god, we could know Pete guitar Lewis is
such a monster in this song. It sounds nothing like
the Elvis version, Completely different songs, nothing in common except
(12:48):
for the first line and the title, and they're completely
different lyrics, completely different chords, structure, beat, everything. But also
Big Mama Thornton had so many other songs and that
this is an even her best song, just Can't Help
Myself is even better Big Mama Thornton's song Willie May's Blues,
which is in which she wrote, you know, she wrote
(13:09):
like plenty of her own material. Yeah, And of course
she wrote the song that became very famous for Janis
Joblin career making song, Beall and Chain, and that was
a song that she wrote and recorded very late in
her career that you know, became a legendary song. But
it's wild that there's so much to Big Mama Thornton's
story way beyond this song, and that this song is
(13:31):
so much more than just a back and forth between
Big Mama Thornton and Elvis. It's just fascinating to see
how much music that she was a part of, in
the whole genres that she was a part of.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah, I mean even just like listening to the recording now,
I mean she just sounds like so that's just like
such a great vocal performance, like such a perfect vocal
performance happening on like I mean, all of her music,
but I mean with this one, it's just so funny
to like listen to her version and then like you know,
the Frankie Bell and the Bell Boys and like Elvis
Presley versions, and it's like her, like her vocals on
(14:04):
it are just like so explosive and so just kind
of like really get under your skin. The way that
she can growl on a song. It's just so perfect.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
It's really amazing. But when she's doing the column response
between her voice and Pete guitar Lewis's guitar, it's really outstanding.
And even in the context of what people were doing
in R and B in the early fifties, you could
definitely see why this song was like such a massive
R and B hit nationally, which was rare for R
(14:33):
and B at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, And I also I had forgotten about the ball
and Chain Chance Joplin connection for the longest.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
It's wild. Yeah, it's the Bay Area, it's the sixties
and Jennis Joplin and her friends in the band Big
Brother they are going to see Big Mama Thornton. Of course,
she's a legendary singer at this point, like she's not rich,
but like people know her and know her work. And
she does this song Ball and Chain that she wrote
and Jennis Choplin like goes over and talks to her
(15:01):
and she's like, where did that song come from? Like
and yeah, mam Threne said, you know, like just wrote
it and that became the career making song. That's a
song that Janis Joplin does at the Monterey Pop Festival
that everybody who's there is like, who the hell is this?
And you see that footage in the Monterey Pop movie
and it completely mind blowing performance. The great scene where
(15:24):
cass Elliott is watching and you just see cass Elliot
and the crowd going wow. You know so much comes
from just that amazing performance of that amazing song. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, I think we're very, very overdue for like a
big Mama Thornton movie, like a great book, like it's
something about her, Like I feel like people are gonna
I feel like it's gonna come.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah. I'm curious, like what will happen in I mean,
it's inevitable that there will be a redux of the
of the list in the future and of course there's
you know, the resurgence that Elvis is having in a
more like aesthetic way right now, Like that's not necessarily
about his music, but like very much about the look
(16:06):
and kind of the the you know, problematic love story
with Priscilla and like the tragedy of the family and
all that stuff. And I'm curious kind of like, i mean,
all these things are so cyclical, right Like it's like
everything kind of comes back in waves that I'm wondering
like when, if, and if like there will be this
kind of fifties resurgence of like this style of music.
(16:30):
I mean thinking even just like of course the nineties
there is like Buddy Holly by Weezer, and then thinking
even going into the early two thousands, which I love
that Jacob already brought this up in his interviews the
about Priscilla where he was like his his encounter with
Elvis was through Lee Lo and Stitch and like Stitch
stressing out of Elvis, like these like kind of weird
moments that brought all that back. Like I'm wondering if
(16:52):
that if the product of this Elvis resurgence is kind
of naturally leading into that maybe or it stops with
Elvis or.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
I think it doesn't stop with Elvis and it continues. Honestly,
people still, I mean, people are just now discovering Big
Mama Thornton. I feel like they will discover Roy Brown.
I know I'm talking about Roy Brown a lot. I'm
a huge fan. Love Don't Love Nobody is just to me.
That's a song that you hear. That you hear Little
(17:22):
Willie John, you hear Wenny Harris, you hear Nellie Lutcher.
There are so many amazing voices from this period that
are just still right to be rediscovered or discovered for
the first time. Yeah, And I feel like hopefully the
Big Mama Thornton, that the resurgence of interest in her
will just people will keep going with that amazing period
(17:43):
of late forties early fifties R and B.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And next up, we're gonna have Angie Martosio talk about
hound Dog with us a little bit. Thank you so much,
Angie for joining us to talk about hon Dog today.
Curious sort of when you first heard any version of
the song.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, it's called Grease. It's a really good film. You
should like catch it out sometime. Also, just want to
point out I was a kid watching that, so I
didn't know that it was like filmed later. I thought
it was like in the fifties, so I didn't understand
that sometimes a movie is like set at a certain
time at all. So to me, I was like John
(18:22):
Travolda's been around for a while, he had this movie.
He was in the fifties, Like what's going on? But anyway,
hearing that song at that time was definitely my introduction,
and I would say, you know, I'm not a diehard
Elvis fan, and it's one of the songs that I'm
not sick of. It's awesome, it's great. I never get
tired of it.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And did you hear the big Mama Thornton version much
later or with it much later?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Which is crazy? You know, that was like a landmark
nineteen fifty three hit, and it was such a big
deal at the time, and it makes you know, I'm
not surprised with our treatment of how things were then
that it's just completely forgotten. But I am really glad
about the last like five years or so, and that
it's come back and that it was on our list.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, and the writers were so young when they worked
on it. I didn't realize they're nineteen when they wrote it.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, Leeber and Stoller were like, they're these two kids
in their early twenties. They're Jewish music nerds. They're obsessed
with black culture and it's so insane to me, Like
the amount of like drama and history that happens with
Hounddog is so crazy, and I think they're a huge
part of it, and they're often overlooked and not discussed.
(19:32):
And yeah, they wrote that song. Yeah, and they did
not like Elvis's version at first. Yeah, which is so crazy,
they said, was the line like it doesn't have the
groove that Big Mama Thornton.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Had, which is and the rest of their lives complaining
about it. Yess very funny how they were always outraged
that this song that was allegedly there was so famous
for Elvis in a totally different version.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
The unsung hero this whole story is Freddy Bell, who
sadly even said, like, I hope my career is not
some up by like giving Elvis hound Dog, Which is
so sad that Elvis went to Vegas for the first
time saw them perform that version, the rabid version I
call it, and he's that's the version that he took
so it's so crazy to me that now it's boiled
(20:16):
down between like Elvis and Big Mama against each other,
when it was never like that to begin with.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean even just so, as Rob
and I discussed earlier in the episode, the history of
hound Dog and the fact that on the five hundred
Great Songs List, of course it is the highest ranking
song from the two thousand and four list to disappear
from the twenty twenty one list, and of course we
have Big Mom and Thornton's version on the newer list,
and even just the history of how kind of public
(20:43):
sentiment about Elvis has changed so much over I mean
over our kind of like from our childhoods to now,
and like from like even the last two years of
Elvis have changed so much. I mean, it's kind of
fascinating to think about how the ebbs and flows have
existed of Elvis as like the king of rock and
roll and what that means and kind of whether that
(21:04):
stands still and like how how that's completely changed even
before this.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
List, And it does post the question right of like
future lists, like will that Elvis version come back on
the list? Like I think about that too. With the
fact that he's gaining such a huge fan base from children.
It's absolutely bonkers to me how huge he's become. Obviously,
the movies were a big deal and part of that,
but it's also just the fact that he's, sorry to
(21:30):
put it so bluntly, like Elvis is cool now and
he was not that cool like ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
There's a great piece that I remember David Brown Arcola,
David Brown wrote about Elvis's estate trying to get him
to be relevant again or to keep that legacy going.
No one wanted to engage with Elvis. Like a lot
of younger fans obviously found him gross and Skivie rightfully
for marrying a teenager, and he properated a lot of
black culture and like a lot of black artists were
(21:55):
lost in the process of him becoming really famous. And
I think there was a lot of of that sort
of disdain for him, and so it's really fascinating how
that still exists, Like that conversation is ongoing. But he
also there's so many people that are really really young
people who love him because of this movie, or like
love the lore of Elvis or the aesthetic of Elvis,
(22:17):
because of both this movie and the Sofia Coppola Priscilla,
which are again very like high aesthetic directors kind of
doing takes on Elvis.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
But it's wild that, like you were saying, that this
story keeps changing, keeps evolving. Every generation, every fan base,
every culture, every new wave of Elvis fans rediscovers the
Elvis universe and has a new Elvis of their own.
It's really amazing how many, how everybody's got their own
(22:47):
different Elvis.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, and I think, you know, Priscilla came out and
it was a little bit how is this going to
be perceived, you know, especially competing with Elvis the movie,
and I thought that was kind of a polite that
I could have been a lot worse. I left the
movie loving it. Obviously, I love Sophia Coppola. I as
someone who's read the book Priscilla, it's very different, and
(23:11):
I think it was a pretty polite. Let's say, it
could have been a lot worse.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
And it seems like it's also like a sort of
stylistic thing. Obviously, like a lot of people like love
that kind of look that he had and the look
that Priscilla had, like and you know, that kind of
comes with it the music. I'm kind of intrigued by
how that will shake out with it because there was
sort of a new interest in Big Mama Thornton's version
(23:36):
because of the Doja Cat song that used that sample
Big Mamma Thorton's original version of of hound Dog and
that was part of the soundtrack that was a huge hit.
So that kind of, you know, thankfully, brought a lot
more light to her and too kind of like the
history of the song. And of course she plays a
part in the movie as well. So I'm kind of
curious because I wonder if the songs will have that
(23:58):
life again, or if this will change the list once more.
I wonder if in like ten years, you know, and
we have a batch of younger critics and writers and
people who you know, loved this these movies or found
them fascinating that way will change it too.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Yeah, I absolutely can't wait to hear. And the last
thing I want to add is just that Lana del
Rey was right the whole time, you know, like that
Priscilla hairstyle is great and it's taken people years to
catch up with her.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I mean, there's a lot we need to catch up
on with with Lanna.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
That's very true.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Well, thank you so much, Angie for me, Thank you always.
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred
Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling
Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me, Britney Spanos.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And Rob Sheffield, Executive.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale and Christian Horde, and
produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Zeiler.
Thanks for watching, and thanks for listening.
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