On this date in 1956 Elvis Presley's Hound Dog was released.
10 facts about Hound Dog:
Elvis wasn’t the first artist to record the song. It had already been a blues hit for Big Mama Thornton in 1953. Elvis altered the lyrics from "You told me you was high class, but I can see through that," to "well, they said you was high-classed, but that was just a lie."
The song was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were teenagers at the time.
They didn’t like what Elvis did with their song. According to Leiber, "It was nervous sounding. It didn't have that insinuation that Big Mama's record had." According to Stoller: "It's something that really is sort of an imitation that never really turned out well."
The way Elvis performed Hound Dog was influenced by a Texas group called Freddie Bell and The Bell Boys, who released the song on the Teen label in 1955.
Elvis insisted on recording 31 takes until he found the version he was satisfied with. In the end, he went with version 28.
On the other side was the song Don’t Be Cruel. Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel was the third record to sell more than three million copies, after Bing Crosby's White Christmas and Gene Autry's Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. So it was the first record that wasn’t about Christmas to sell more than three million copies.
In the movie Forrest Gump, Elvis stays with Forrest and plays Hound Dog on his guitar. Forrest dances to it in his leg braces and then the scene cuts to footage of Elvis performing the song later on, implying that Forrest’s dancing had inspired Presley’s moves.
Elvis once performed the song on The Steve Allen Show while singing to a Basset Hound.
In 1988, Presley's original 1956 RCA recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
People who have recorded covers of Hound Dog include Jimi Hendrix, The Everly Brothers, John Lennon, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Robert Palmer, James Taylor, Jeff Beck, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Burnette and The Muppets.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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