title: Neocolonialism

text: Noam Chomsky has been a prominent critic of "American imperialism"; he believes that the basic principle of the foreign policy of the United States is the establishment of "open societies" that are economically and politically controlled by the United States and where U.S.-based businesses can prosper. He argues that the U.S. seeks to suppress any movements within these countries that are not compliant with U.S. interests and to ensure that U.S.-friendly governments are placed in power. When discussing current events, he emphasizes their place within a wider historical perspective. He believes that official, sanctioned historical accounts of U.S. and British extraterritorial operations have consistently whitewashed these nations' actions in order to present them as having benevolent motives in either spreading democracy or, in older instances, spreading Christianity; criticizing these accounts, he seeks to correct them. Prominent examples he regularly cites are the actions of the British Empire in India and Africa and the actions of the U.S. in Vietnam, the Philippines, Latin America, and the Middle East.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Chomsky's political work has centered heavily on criticizing the actions of the United States. He has said he focuses on the U.S. because the country has militarily and economically dominated the world during his lifetime and because its liberal democratic electoral system allows the citizenry to influence government policy. His hope is that, by spreading awareness of the impact U.S. foreign policies have on the populations affected by them, he can sway the populations of the U.S. and other countries into opposing the policies. He urges people to criticize their governments' motivations, decisions, and actions, to accept responsibility for their own thoughts and actions, and to apply the same standards to others as to themselves. Chomsky has been critical of U.S. involvement in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, arguing that it has consistently blocked a peaceful settlement. Chomsky also criticizes the U.S.'s close ties with Saudi Arabia and involvement in Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, highlighting that Saudi Arabia has "one of the most grotesque human rights records in the world".


title: Neocolonialism

text: Chalmers Johnson argued in 2004 that America's version of the colony is the military base. Johnson wrote numerous books, including three examinations of the consequences of what he called the "American Empire": "Blowback", "The Sorrows of Empire", and "Nemesis; The Last Days of the American Republic".


title: Neocolonialism

text: International relations scholar Joseph Nye argues that U.S. power is more and more based on "soft power", which comes from cultural hegemony rather than raw military or economic force. This includes such factors as the widespread desire to emigrate to the United States, the prestige and corresponding high proportion of foreign students at U.S. universities, and the spread of U.S. styles of popular music and cinema. Mass immigration into America may justify this hypothesis, but it is hard to know whether the United States would still maintain its prestige without its military and economic superiority.


title: Neocolonialism

text: "The Invisible Government" is a 1964 non-fiction book by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, published by Random House. The book described the operations and activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. Christopher Wright of Columbia University wrote that the book argues "that to a significant extent major policies of the United States in the cold war are established and implemented with the help of government mechanisms and procedures that are invisible to the public and seem to lack the usual political and budgetary constraints on their activities and personnel."


title: Neocolonialism

text: "The New York Times" described the book as "a journalistic, dramatic narrative that may move us toward a fundamental reappraisal of where secret operations fit into a democratic nation." Wise stated that when the work was published, ordinary people generally had little knowledge of what the CIA did, and that the book "was the first serious study of the CIA’s activities", something that the CIA disliked. Wright added that "Subsequent admissions and appraisals ... have further substantiated the reports ... and reinforced the main thesis".


title: Neocolonialism

text: The CIA has been involved in the training and support of death squads that suppressed dissent against US-backed right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. Florencio Caballero, a former Honduran Army interrogator, said that he had been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, which the "New York Times" confirmed with US and Honduran officials. Much of his account was confirmed by three American and two Honduran officials, and may be the fullest given of how army and police units were authorized to organize death squads that seized, interrogated and killed suspected leftists. He said that while Argentine and Chilean trainers taught the Honduran Army kidnapping and elimination techniques, the CIA explicitly forbade the use of physical torture or assassination. In addition to the CIA's support of death squads in Latin America, Human Rights Watch asserted in a 2019 report that the CIA backed similar death squads in Afghanistan. The CIA, in addition to aiding, supporting, participating in, and supporting death squads in Latin America, has also committed human rights violations via the overthrow of democratically elected governments. Following the September 11 attacks, the CIA engaged in the torture of detainees at CIA-run black sites and sent detainees to be tortured by friendly governments in a manner contravening both US and international law.


title: Neocolonialism

text: United States involvement in regime change has entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the Spanish–American and Philippine–American wars. At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbors Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.


title: Neocolonialism

text: During World War II, the United States helped overthrow many Nazi Germany and imperial Japanese puppet regimes. Examples include regimes in the Philippines, Korea, the Eastern portion of China, and much of Europe. United States forces were also instrumental in ending the rule of Adolf Hitler over Germany and of Benito Mussolini over Italy. After World War II, the United States in 1945 ratified the UN Charter, the preeminent international law document, which legally bound the U.S. government to the Charter's provisions, including Article 2(4), which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations, except in very limited circumstances. Therefore, any legal claim advanced to justify regime change by a foreign power carries a particularly heavy burden.


title: Neocolonialism

text: In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government struggled with the Soviet Union for global leadership, influence and security within the context of the Cold War. Under the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. government feared that national security would be compromised by governments propped by the Soviet Union's own involvement in regime change and promoted the domino theory, with later presidents following Eisenhower's precedent. Subsequently, the United States expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond traditional area of operations, Central America and the Caribbean. Significant operations included the United States and United Kingdom-orchestrated 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion targeting Cuba, and support for the overthrow of Sukarno by General Suharto in Indonesia. In addition, the U.S. has interfered in the national elections of countries, including in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philippines in 1953, and in Lebanon in the 1957 elections using secret cash infusions. According to one study, the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000. Another study found that the U.S. engaged in 64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has led or supported wars to determine the governance of a number of countries. Stated U.S. aims in these conflicts have included fighting the War on Terror, as in the Afghan war, or removing dictatorial and hostile regimes, as in the Iraq War.


title: Neocolonialism

text: The U.S. has been criticized for supporting dictatorships with economic assistance and military hardware. Particular dictatorships have included Zia and Musharraf of Pakistan, the Shah of Iran, Museveni of Uganda, warlords in Somalia, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Park Chung-hee of South Korea, Generalissimo Franco of Spain, António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano of Portugal, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala, Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, Suharto of Indonesia, Georgios Papadopoulos of Greece, and Hissène Habré of Chad.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Ruth J Blakeley, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, posits that the United States and its allies sponsored and facilitated state terrorism on an "enormous scale" during the Cold War. The justification given for this was to contain Communism, but Blakeley says it was also a means by which to buttress the interests of US business elites and to promote the expansion of capitalism and neoliberalism in the Global South.


title: Neocolonialism

text: J. Patrice McSherry, a professor of political science at Long Island University, states that "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans were tortured, abducted or killed by right-wing military regimes as part of the US-led anti-communist crusade," which included US support for Operation Condor and the Guatemalan military during the Guatemalan Civil War. According to Latin Americanist John Henry Coatsworth, the number of repression victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites during the period 1960 to 1990. Mark Aarons asserts that the atrocities carried out by Western-backed dictatorships rival those of the communist world.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Some experts assert that the US directly facilitated and encouraged the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists in Indonesia during the mid-1960s. Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, says "Washington did everything in its power to encourage and facilitate the army-led massacre of alleged PKI members, and U.S. officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to power and frustrate the [Johnson] Administration's emerging plans for a post-Sukarno Indonesia." According to Simpson, the terror in Indonesia was an "essential building block of the quasi neo-liberal policies the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia in the years to come". Historian John Roosa, commenting on documents released from the US embassy in Jakarta in 2017, says they confirm that "the U.S. was part and parcel of the operation, strategizing with the Indonesian army and encouraging them to go after the PKI." Geoffrey B. Robinson, historian at UCLA, argues that without the support of the U.S. and other powerful Western states, the Indonesian Army's program of mass killings would not have occurred.


title: Neocolonialism

text: The U.S. has been accused of complicity in war crimes for backing the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, which has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe, including a cholera outbreak and millions facing starvation.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Chalmers Johnson argued in 2004 that America's version of the colony is the military base. Chip Pitts argued similarly in 2006 that enduring U.S. bases in Iraq suggested a vision of "Iraq as a colony".


title: Neocolonialism

text: While territories such as Guam, the United States Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico remain under U.S. control, the U.S. allowed many of its overseas territories or occupations to gain independence after World War II. Examples include the Philippines (1946), the Panama Canal Zone (1979), Palau (1981), the Federated States of Micronesia (1986), and the Marshall Islands (1986). Most of them still have U.S. bases within their territories. In the case of Okinawa, which came under U.S. administration after the Battle of Okinawa during the Second World War, this happened despite local popular opinion on the island. In 2003, a Department of Defense distribution found the United States had bases in over 36 countries worldwide, including the Camp Bondsteel base in the disputed territory of Kosovo. Since 1959, Cuba has regarded the U.S. presence in Guantánamo Bay as illegal.


title: Neocolonialism

text: In 2015, David Vine's book, "Base Nation", found 800 U.S. military bases located outside of the U.S., including 174 bases in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. The total cost: an estimated $100 billion a year.


title: Neocolonialism

text: According to "The Huffington Post," "The 45 nations and territories with little or no democratic rule represent more than half of the roughly 80 countries now hosting U.S. bases. ... Research by political scientist Kent Calder confirms what's come to be known as the "dictatorship hypothesis": The United States tends to support dictators [and other undemocratic regimes] in nations where it enjoys basing facilities."


title: Neocolonialism

text: Although not always aligned with colonial policy, for example in its opposition to slavery in the Americas, modern senior Catholic churchmen have been prominent in their pronouncements about the peoples of former colonial territories, especially during the pontificate of Pope Francis. Thus at the 2014 Synod on the Family, Cardinal Walter Kasper said that African Catholics "should not tell us too much what we have to do." During the 2019 Synod on the Amazon, Austrian-born Bishop Erwin Kräutler, a former bishop in Brazil, said at the October 9 Synod press conference that "there is no alternative" to abolishing celibacy in the Amazon basin because the natives "don’t understand celibacy".


title: Neocolonialism

text: The People's Republic of China has built increasingly strong ties with some African, Asian, European and Latin American nations which has led to accusations of colonialism, becoming Africa's largest trading partner in 2009. As of August 2007, an estimated 750,000 Chinese nationals were working or living for extended periods in Africa. In the 1980s and 90s, China continued to purchase natural resources—petroleum and minerals—from Africa to fuel the Chinese economy and to finance international business enterprises. In 2006, trade had increased to $50 billion expanding to $500 billion by 2016.


title: Neocolonialism

text: In Africa, China has loaned $95.5 billion to various countries between 2000 and 2015, the majority being spent on power generation and infrastructure. Cases in which this has ended with China acquiring foreign land have led to accusations of "debt-trap diplomacy". Other analysts have concluded that China is likely trying to "stockpile international support for contentious political issues."


title: Neocolonialism

text: Commentators have stated that Western perceptions of China's motives are misconstrued due to Western conceptions of development as seen through their own lens of exploitation of others for resources—as exemplified by European colonialism—instead of through Chinese conceptions of development.


title: Neocolonialism

text: In 2018, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad cancelled two China-funded projects. He also talked about fears of Malaysia becoming "indebted" and of a "new version of colonialism". He later clarified that he did not refer to the Belt and Road Initiative or China with this.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Langan (2017) stated that Western actors tend to paint China as a threat in Africa, othering it from themselves, but it neglects the fact that Europe, the United States, China, and other emerging powers likewise facilitate economic and political interests through aid and trade in a manner that conflicts with African sovereignty.


title: Neocolonialism

text: The government of Niue has been trying to get back access to its domain name, .nu. The country signed a deal with a Massachusetts-based non-profit in 1999 that gave away rights to the domain name. Management of the domain name has since shifted to a Swedish organisation. The Niue government is currently fighting on two fronts to get back control on its domain name, including with the ICANN. Toke Talagi, the long-serving Premier of Niue who died in 2020, called it a form of neocolonialism.


title: Neocolonialism

text: To ensure a reliable, long-term supply of food, the South Korean government and powerful Korean multinationals bought farming rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in under-developed countries.


title: Neocolonialism

text: South Korea's RG Energy Resources Asset Management CEO Park Yong-soo stressed that "the nation does not produce a single drop of crude oil and other key industrial minerals. To power economic growth and support people's livelihoods, we cannot emphasise too much that securing natural resources in foreign countries is a must for our future survival." The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, stated that the rise in land deals could create a form of "neocolonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.


title: Neocolonialism

text: In 2008, South Korean multinational Daewoo Logistics secured 1.3 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar to grow maize and crops for biofuels. Roughly half of the country's arable land, as well as rainforests were to be converted into palm and corn monocultures, producing food for export from a country where a third of the population and 50 percent of children under five are malnourished, using South African workers instead of locals. Local residents were not consulted or informed, despite being dependent on the land for food and income. The controversial deal played a major part in prolonged anti-government protests that resulted in over a hundred deaths. This was a source of popular resentment that contributed to the fall of then-President Marc Ravalomanana. The new president, Andry Rajoelina, cancelled the deal. Tanzania later announced that South Korea was in talks to develop 100,000 hectares for food production and processing for 700 to 800 billion won. Scheduled to be completed in 2010, it was to be the largest single piece of overseas South Korean agricultural infrastructure ever built.


title: Neocolonialism

text: In 2009, Hyundai Heavy Industries acquired a majority stake in a company cultivating 10,000 hectares of farmland in the Russian Far East and a South Korean provincial government secured 95,000 hectares of farmland in Oriental Mindoro, central Philippines, to grow corn. The South Jeolla province became the first provincial government to benefit from a new central government fund to develop farmland overseas, receiving a loan of $1.9 million. The project was expected to produce 10,000 tonnes of feed in the first year. South Korean multinationals and provincial governments purchased land in Sulawesi, Indonesia, Cambodia and Bulgan, Mongolia. The national South Korean government announced its intention to invest 30 billion won in land in Paraguay and Uruguay. As of 2009 discussions with Laos, Myanmar and Senegal were underway.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Although the concept of neocolonialism was originally developed within a Marxist theoretical framework and is generally employed by the political left, the term "neocolonialism" is found in other theoretical frameworks.


title: Neocolonialism

text: "Coloniality" claims that knowledge production is strongly influenced by the context of the person producing the knowledge and that this has further disadvantaged developing countries with limited knowledge production infrastructure. It originated among critics of subaltern theories, which, although strongly de-colonial, are less concerned with the source of knowledge.


title: Neocolonialism

text: One variant of neocolonialism theory critiques "cultural colonialism", the desire of wealthy nations to control other nations' values and perceptions through cultural means such as media, language, education and religion, ultimately for economic reasons. One impact of this is "colonial mentality", feelings of inferiority that lead post-colonial societies to latch onto physical and cultural differences between the foreigners and themselves. Foreign ways become held in higher esteem than indigenous ways. Given that colonists and colonisers were generally of different races, the colonised may over time hold that the colonisers' race was responsible for their superiority. Rejections of the colonisers culture, such as the Negritude movement, have been employed to overcome these associations. Post-colonial importation or continuation of cultural mores or elements may be regarded as a form of neocolonialism.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Post-colonialism theories in philosophy, political science, literature and film deal with the cultural legacy of colonial rule. Post-colonialism studies examine how once-colonised writers articulate their national identity; how knowledge about the colonised was generated and applied in service to the interests of the coloniser; and how colonialist literature justified colonialism by presenting the colonised people as inferior whose society, culture and economy must be managed for them. Post-colonial studies incorporate subaltern studies of "history from below"; post-colonial cultural evolution; the psychopathology of colonisation (by Frantz Fanon); and the cinema of film makers such as the Cuban Third Cinema, e.g. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and Kidlat Tahimik.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Critiques of postcolonialism/neocolonialism are evident in literary theory. International relations theory defined "postcolonialism" as a field of study. While the lasting effects of cultural colonialism are of central interest, the intellectual antecedents in cultural critiques of neocolonialism are economic. Critical international relations theory references neocolonialism from Marxist positions as well as postpositivist positions, including postmodernist, postcolonial and feminist approaches. These differ from both realism and liberalism in their epistemological and ontological premises. The neo-liberalist approach tends to depict modern forms of colonialism as a benevolent imperialism.


title: Neocolonialism

text: Concepts of neocolonialism can be found in theoretical works investigating gender outside the global north. Often these conceptions can be seen as erasing gender diversity within communities in the global south to create conceptions of gender that align with the global north. Gerise Herndon argues that applying feminism or other theoretical frameworks around gender must look at the relationship between the individual subject, their home country or culture, and the country and culture that exerts neocolonial control over the country. In her piece “Gender Construction and Neocolonialism,” Herndon presents the writings of Maryse Conde as an example of grappling with what it means to have your identity constructed by neocolonial powers. Her work explores how women in burgeoning nations rebuilt their identities in the postcolonial period. The task of creating new identities was met with challenges from not only an internal view of what the culture was in these places but also from the external expectations of ex-colonial powers.


title: Neocolonialism

text: An example of the construction of gender norms and conceptions by neocolonial interests is made clear in the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act. In 2014, Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. The act, first introduced in 2009, made gay relationships illegal. Prohibition against homosexual relationships was previously covered by laws against sodomy but expanded to include community policing of homosexual people. Infringing this act would be punished by jail time. The act also introduced life sentences for anyone who participated in aggravated Homosexuality or was found trying to marry a same-sex partner. The call for this bill came from Ugandans who claimed traditional African values that did not include Homosexuality. This act faced backlash from western countries, citing human rights violations. The Ugandan response was to claim that this was a neocolonialist attack on their culture. Kristen Cheney argued that this is a misrepresentation of neocolonialism at work and that this conception of gender and anti Homosexuality erased historically diverse gender identities in Africa. To Cheney, neocolonialism was found in accepting conservative gender identity politics, specifically those of U.S.-based Evangelical Christians. Before the introduction of this act, conservative Christian groups in the United States had put African religious leaders and politicians on their payroll, reflecting the talking points of U.S.-based Christian evangelism. Cheney argues that this adoption and bankrolling of U.S. conservative Christian evangelist thought in Uganda is the real neocolonialism and effectively erodes any historical gender diversity in Africa.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: "Hound Dog" is a twelve-bar blues song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Recorded originally by 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 number one. Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog" is listed as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll", and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in February 2013.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: "Hound Dog" has been recorded more than 250 times. The best-known version is the July 1956 recording by Elvis Presley, which ranked number 19 on "Rolling Stone"'s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, but was excluded from the revised list in 2021; it is also 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 number one 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. Presley's 1956 RCA recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1988, and it is listed as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: "Hound Dog" has been at the center of controversies and several lawsuits, including disputes over authorship, royalties, and copyright infringement by the many answer songs released by such artists as Rufus Thomas and Roy Brown. From the 1970s onward, the song has been featured in numerous films, including "Grease", "Forrest Gump", "Lilo & Stitch", "A Few Good Men", "Hounddog", "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", and "Nowhere Boy".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On August 12, 1952, R&B bandleader Johnny Otis asked 19-year-old songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to his home to meet blues singer Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton. Thornton had been signed by "Diamond" Don Robey's Houston-based Peacock Records the year before, and after two failed singles, Robey had enlisted Otis to reverse her fortunes. After hearing Thornton rehearse several songs, Leiber and Stoller "forged a tune to suit her personality—brusque and badass". In an interview in "Rolling Stone" in April 1990, Stoller said: "She was a wonderful blues singer, with a great moaning style. But it was as much her appearance as her blues style that influenced the writing of 'Hound Dog' and the idea that we wanted her to growl it." Leiber recalled: "We saw Big Mama and she knocked me cold. She looked like the biggest, baddest, saltiest chick you would ever see. And she was mean, a 'lady bear,' as they used to call 'em. She must have been 350 pounds, and she had all these scars all over her face" conveying words which could not be sung. "But how to do it without actually saying it? And how to do it telling a story? I couldn't just have a song full of expletives." In 1999, Leiber said, "I was trying to get something like the Furry Lewis phrase 'Dirty Mother Furya'. I was looking for something closer to that but I couldn't find it, because everything I went for was too coarse and would not have been playable on the air." Using a "black slang expression referring to a man who sought a woman to take care of him", the song's opening line, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog", was a euphemism, said Leiber The song, a Southern blues lament, is "the tale of a woman throwing a gigolo out of her house and her life":


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: The song was written for a woman to sing in which she berates "her selfish, exploitative man", and in it she "expresses a woman's rejection of a man – the metaphorical dog in the title". According to Iain Thomas, "'Hound Dog' embodies the Thornton persona she had crafted as a comedienne prior to entering the music business" by parading "the classic puns, extended metaphors, and sexual double entendres so popular with the bawdy genre." R&B expert George A. Moonoogian concurs, calling it "a biting and scathing satire in the double-entendre genre" of 1950s rhythm and blues.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Leiber and Stoller wrote the song "Hound Dog" in 12 to 15 minutes, with Leiber scribbling the lyrics in pencil on ordinary paper and without musical notation in the car on the way to Stoller's apartment. Said Leiber, "'Hound Dog' took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy." According to Leiber, as soon as they reached the parking lot and Stoller's 1937 Plymouth, "I was beating out a rhythm we called the 'buck dance' on the roof of the car. We got to Johnny Otis's house and Mike went right to the piano… didn't even bother to sit down. He had a cigarette in his mouth that was burning his left eye, and he started to play the song."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Leiber and Stoller along with Johnny Otis, also wrote a different version to the "Hound Dog" song structure on behalf of Big Mama Thornton, recorded with an alternative lyric entitled "Tom Cat".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog" is credited with "helping to spur the evolution of black R&B into rock music". Brandeis University professor Stephen J. Whitefield, in his 2001 book "In Search of American Jewish Culture", regards "Hound Dog" as a marker of "the success of race-mixing in music a year before the desegregation of public schools was mandated" in "Brown v. Board of Education". Leiber regarded the original recording by the 350-pound "blues belter" Big Mama Thornton as his favorite version, while Stoller said, "If I had to name my favorite recordings, I'd say they are Big Mama Thornton's 'Hound Dog' and Peggy Lee's 'Is That All There Is?'"


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In 1992, Lieber and Stoller recalled that during the rehearsal, Thornton sang the song as a ballad. Lieber said that this was not the way they planned and sang it for her, with Stoller on piano, as an example of the concept. Thornton agreed to try their recommendation.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, Thornton's version is "an important [part of the] beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Thornton recorded "Hound Dog" at Radio Recorders Annex in Los Angeles on August 13, 1952, the day after its composition. It subsequently became her biggest hit. According to "Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography", Thornton's "Hound Dog" was the first record that Leiber and Stoller produced themselves, taking over from bandleader Johnny Otis. Said Stoller:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Otis played drums on the recording, replacing Ledard "Kansas City" Bell. As Otis was still signed exclusively to Federal Records, a subsidiary of Syd Nathan's King Records as "Kansas City Bill" or perhaps with Mercury Records at this time, Otis used the pseudonym "Kansas City Bill" (after his drummer "Kansas City" Bell) on this record. Therefore, Otis, Louisiana blues guitarist Pete "Guitar" Lewis, and Puerto Rican bass player Mario Delagarde (some sources say erroneously it was Albert Winston) are listed as "Kansas City Bill & Orchestra" on the Peacock record labels.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: During the rehearsal, Leiber objected to Thornton's vocal approach, as she was crooning the lyrics rather than belting them out. Although intimidated by her size and facial scarring, Leiber protested, to which Thornton responded with an icy glare and told him, White boy, don't you be tellin' me how to sing the blues. After this exchange, Leiber sang the song himself to demonstrate how they wanted it done. After that, according to Stoller's later recollection, Thornton understood the bawdy style they were looking for.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Speaking to music writer Ralph J. Gleason, Thornton recalled that she added a few interjections of her own, played around with the rhythm (some of the choruses have thirteen rather than twelve bars), and had the band bark and howl like hound dogs at the end of the song: "I started to sing the words and join in some of my own. All that talkin' and hollerin'—that's my own." Thornton interacts constantly in a call and response fashion during a one-minute long guitar "solo" by Lewis. These verbal interjections, sometimes called "blues talk," are common in blues music. Years later Thornton helped launch a controversy over "Hound Dog", claiming to have written it. When questioned further on the matter, Thornton explained that, while the song had been composed by Leiber and Stoller, she had transformed it: "They gave me the words, but I changed it around and did it my way". In his book "Race, Rock, and Elvis", Michael T. Bertrand says that Thornton's explanation "ingenuously stresses artist interpretation as the sole yardstick with which to measure authenticity".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Thornton recorded two takes of the song, and the second take was released. Habanera and mambo elements can be found in this recording. Puerto Rican bass player Mario Delagarde is credited with adding "a jazz-based rhythm." Influenced by African-American musical cultures, its "sounds range from the gravelly beginning of several phrases, to her spoken and howled interpolations, and the ending with dog sounds from the band." According to musicologist Robert Fink, Thornton's delivery has flexible phrasing making use of micro-inflections and syncopations. Each has a focal accent which is never repeated. According to Maureen Mahon:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On September 9, 1952, the copyright application for "Hound Dog" was lodged. On the application the words and music are attributed to Thornton and recording executive Don Robey, with the copyright claimants listed as: "Murphy L. Robey (W) & Willie Mae Thornton (A)." It was renewed subsequently on May 13, 1980, with the same details.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In late February 1953, "Hound Dog" was released by Peacock (Peacock 1612), with the song credited erroneously on the label to Leiber--Otis. Thornton recalled later that she learned her record was in circulation while she was on her way to a performance with the Johnny Otis Orchestra during this tour in Dayton, Ohio. "I was going to the theater and I just turned the radio on in the car and the man said, 'Here's a record that's going nationwide: 'Hound Dog' by Willie Mae Thornton.' I said, 'That's me!' [laughs] I hadn't heard the record in so long. So when we get to the theater they was blasting it. You could hear it from the theater, from the loudspeaker. They were just playing 'Hound Dog' all over the theater. So I goes up in the operating room, I say, 'Do you mind playing that again?' 'Cause I hadn't heard the record in so long I forgot the words myself. So I stood there while he was playing it, listening to it. So that evening I sang it on the show, and everybody went for it. 'Hound Dog' just took off like a jet."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On March 7, 1953, "Hound Dog" was advertised in "Billboard", and reviewed positively on March 14, 1953, as a new record to watch, described as "a wild and exciting rhumba blues" with "infectious backing that rocks all the way". According to Johnny Ace biographer James M Salem, "The rawness of the sound combined with the overt sexuality of the lyric made 'Hound Dog' an immediate smash hit in urban black America from late March to the middle of July 1953." "Hound Dog" takes off immediately and looks like a national hit record. Rufus Thomas quickly records an answer song called "Bear Cat" on Sun 181. Thornton's record is such a big seller that Peacock Records has three new pressing plants running full-time to try and keep up with demand. Debuting in the charts on March 28, 1953, it spent fourteen weeks on the "Billboard" Rhythm and Blues charts, seven of them at number one. By April 30, 1953, "Cash Box" magazine listed the song as "the nation's top-selling blues record", and it topped the charts in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Newark, Memphis, Dallas, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. "By mid summer, it is obvious that "Hound Dog" will be the biggest seller in the history of Peacock Records." The song was named as the Best Rhythm and Blues song of 1953 by "Cash Box" magazine, and was ranked number three on "Billboard"'s Best Selling Rhythm & Blues Chart for 1953.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Don Robey estimated that Thornton's version of "Hound Dog" sold between 500,000 and 750,000 copies, and would have sold more had its sales not been diluted by an abundance of cover versions and "answer songs". The success of "Hound Dog" secured Peacock Record's place as a major independent label. However, despite its success, neither the composers nor artist were compensated well for their efforts. According to Stoller, "Big Mama's 'Hound Dog' went to number one, sold a million copies, and did nothing for our bank statements. We were getting screwed." After suing Robey, "We were given an advance check for $1,200," said Stoller, "but the check bounced." As a result, Leiber and Stoller started their own label, Spark Records, and publishing company, Quintet Music. Those ventures were successful, but Leiber and Stoller would only earn substantial royalties from "Hound Dog" when it was covered by Elvis Presley (RCA 6604) in July 1956. Similarly, Thornton stated: "That song sold over two million records. I got one check for $500 and never saw another." In 1984, she told "Rolling Stone", "Didn't get no money from them at all. Everybody livin' in a house but me. I'm just livin."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By July 1956, "the rock 'n roll age was upon the world, and as the new sensation Elvis Presley recorded "Hound Dog" to international acclaim, Peacock re-released Willa Mae Thornton's original" by August 18, 1956, backing it with "Rock-a-Bye Baby" (Peacock 5–1612), but it failed to chart. In Australia and New Zealand, Prestige Records (founded in Auckland by 17 year-old Phil Warren and Bruce Henderson) released the same record on licence in 1956 (Prestige PSP-1004), but the composition is credited to Robey-Thornton-Leiber-Stoller. By early 1957 "Willa Mae Thornton is seen as one who is out of the rock / pop mainstream and so her affiliation with Peacock Records ends... Thornton continues to make personal appearances and is always remembered for her original version of "Hound Dog" which gets a spate of airplay during the summer of 1958 which leads to another re-release of the original." On October 7, 1965, Thornton's live performance of "Hound Dog" with Eddie Boyd and Buddy Guy at American Folk Blues Festival '65 in Hamburg, Germany, is recorded and released subsequently by Fontana Records on an album "American Folk Blues Festival '65" (Fontana 681 529 TL) with other artists.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In February 2013, Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog" was inducted into Grammy Hall of Fame. It has also received the following accolades:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Thornton's "Hound Dog" was so popular that it spawned at least ten cover versions of the original before Elvis Presley recorded it in July 1956. One of the earliest covers of Thornton's original was that of Little Esther, who recorded an R&B cover on March 11, 1953 (b/w "Sweet Lips") on Federal Records (Federal 12126) that was released by April. While Federal's trade ads touted this release as the greatest record ever made by Little Esther, in its review on April 11, 1953, "Billboard" opined: "It fails to build the same excitement of the original."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Within a month of the release of Thornton's "Hound Dog", the following six country cover versions of the song—all credited erroneously to Leiber-Stoller (or )-Otis—were released on several different labels by white artists:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On February 24, 1954, The Cozy Cole All Stars recorded an instrumental version, "Hound Dog Special" (MGM 11794), a " of Willie Mae Thornton's" version.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Bass player Al Rex, who joined Bill Haley and His Comets in the fall of 1955, told of performing the song when given the spotlight at live performances. "I used to do 'Hound Dog.' Haley would get mad at me if I'd do that. This was even before Presley did it. Haley didn't like those guys from Philadelphia that wrote the song." As Leiber and Stoller were not from Philadelphia (and Haley recorded other Leiber and Stoller songs), Haley was probably referring to Freddie Bell and Bernie Lowe, of Philadelphia's Teen Records.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In later years Big Mama Thornton's version was covered by such artists as: the Dirty Blues Band on their 1968 album "Dirty Blues Band"; Etta James; Robert Palmer; and Macy Gray.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By the end of 1953, at least six "answer songs" that responded to 'Big Mama' Thornton's original version of "Hound Dog" were released. According to Peacock's Don Robey, these songs were "bastardizations" of the original and reduced its sales potential.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: The first and most popular answer song to "Hound Dog" was "Bear Cat (The Answer To Hound Dog)" (Sun 101), recorded at Sun Studios at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee on March 8, 1953, just two weeks after Thornton's original version was released, and even before a review of "Hound Dog" had been published in "Billboard". "Bear Cat" had new lyrics written by Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, in which he altered the gender of the singer, who bemoaned that his woman was a "bear cat", a Jazz Age slang term for "a hot-blooded or fiery girl". According to Phillips' biographer Peter Guralnick:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Looking for a suitable man to record this song, Phillips selected part-time local WDIA disk jockey Rufus Thomas, who adopted the nickname, "Rufus 'Hound Dog' Thomas" for this recording. "With his gruff Louis Armstrong-influenced voice, quick wit, and eye-popping antics, he was the perfect candidate to reply to the harsh accusations Big Mama Thornton had thrown out in her song, this time leveling them at a 'bossy woman'". Despite his reluctance to record the song and his reservations about the band assembled by Phillips, Thomas "threw himself into the song with the same brash charm that he brought to all his performances, complete with yowls, growls, and fervent imprecations". The record's spare electric guitar work by Memphis bluesman Joe Hill Louis was greatly influenced by that of Pete Lewis on the original. According to James M. Salem:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: While "the result was peppier than Big Mama's version, with a more straight-ahead beat... [Phillips] was under no illusions about surpassing the original": "Hell, we didn't come close to being as good as Big Mama. She could have done that song a cappella and convinced me that, by God, you ain't nothing but a damned hound dog!" Thomas was dissatisfied with the result, especially Joe Hill Louis's country-style blues guitar playing. In 1978, Robert Palmer wrote: "Even today, Rufus takes perverse delight in pointing out the wrong notes in Louis's solo."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Within two weeks, "Bear Cat" (Sun 181) was in stores, prompting "Billboard" to describe it on March 28 as "the fastest answer song to hit the market". It became both Thomas' and Sun Records' first hit, More than 5,000 copies were ordered in the first days by distributors, and by mid-April it had charted nationally, eventually reaching number three on the R&B charts. However, as Phillips claimed a writing credit for the song, a copyright-infringement suit ensued that nearly bankrupted Phillips' record label.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: When the dust settled, the publishing for "Hound Dog" (in all variations) remained with Lion, and writing credit with Leiber and Stoller. In April, 1954, "Billboard"'s Rolontz summed up the events thusly: "The year 1953 saw an important precedent set in regard to answer tunes… since the 'Hound Dog' decision, few record firms have attempted to 'answer' smash hits by other companies by using same tune with different lyrics."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Two records were released that were neither cover versions of nor answers to Thornton's release, yet used a similar melody without any attribution to Leiber and Stoller. The first was Smiley Lewis's "Play Girl", credited to D. Bartholomew and released by the Imperial Records label (Imperial 45–5234) by the end of March 1953. Described as a "stomping uptempo boogie rocker", it began: "You ain't nothin' but a Play Girl / Staying out all night long". In April 1955, female impersonator Jesse "Big 'Tiny'" Kennedy recorded "Country Boy" accompanied by His Orchestra that was released by RCA's Groove Records (Groove 4G-0106) by May 21. While credited solely to Kennedy, this song has a similar melody to "Hound Dog": "'Country Boy' has a deceptively slouching flip on the 'Hound Dog' motif – this time with Tiny proclaiming proudly that he 'ain't nothing but a country boy'".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In the early 1970s, Robert Loers, owner of Dutch label Redita Records, found a song with the same melody as "Hound Dog" called "(You Ain't Nuttin' But a) Juicehead" on an anonymous acetate at Select-o-Hits, the Memphis distributorship owned by Sam Phillips' brother, Tom, where Sun artifacts were stored.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Philip H. Ennis sees "Two Hound Dogs", which was recorded on May 10, 1955, by Bill Haley & His Comets (Decca 29552), as a response to Thornton's recording. While not an answer record in the traditional sense, the lyric characterized "Rhythm" and "Blues" as the titular "Two Hound Dogs," an apparent testament to the stature of "Hound Dog."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By 1955 Philadelphia-based Teen Records co-founder Bernie Lowe suspected that "Hound Dog" could potentially have greater appeal, but knew it had to be sanitized for mainstream acceptance, and so asked popular Las Vegas lounge act Freddie Bell of Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, who had been performing songs with "tongue-in-cheek" humour as the band in residence at The Silver Queen Bar and Cocktail Lounge at The Sands Hotel and Casino soon after its opening in December 1952, to rewrite the lyrics for their first release on his label.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Bell removed innuendoes like "You can wag your tail but I ain't gonna feed you no more" and replaced them with sanitized lyrics, changing a racy song about a disappointing lover into a song that was literally about a dog. Musically, he gave the song a rock and roll rhythm. Jerry Leiber, the original lyricist, found these changes irritating, saying that the rewritten words made "no sense". Described as "one of their trademark spoofs," the Bellboys version became a staple of their Las Vegas act.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In early 1955 this version of "Hound Dog" became the first record released on Teen Records (TEEN 101), "a subsidiary of the equally obscure Sound Records", that was owned by Lowe; jazz impresario Nat Segal, who owned Downbeat, the first integrated nightclub in Philadelphia; and partially by American Bandstand's creator and first host Bob Horn. Their version of "Hound Dog", which includes "arf arf" dog sounds made by the band throughout the song, also included the "most overused rhythmic pattern" of the 1950s, the three-beat Latin bass riff pioneered by Dave Bartholomew that was also used in Rufus Thomas' "Bear Cat", a 1953 answer song to Thornton's original recording, and subsequently in Presley's 1956 recording. In June 1984 music researcher and historian George A. Moonoogian also "found a stylistic similarity" between Frank "Dual Trumpeter" Motley & His Crew's 1954 number "New Hound Dog" (Big Town 116) and Bell's 1955 Teen Records release of "Hound Dog". On the single's label, authorship is credited to and Stoller. No credit is given to Bell or anyone else for the revised lyrics. Their recording of "Hound Dog" was a local hit in the Philadelphia area, and received "lots of radio play on the east coast, and Bell found himself with a regional hit, that included Philadelphia, Cleveland, and New York. Despite "Hound Dog" spending 16 weeks at number one on the pre-Dick Clark "Bandstand", it attracted no national attention. However, the regional popularity of this release, along with the group's showmanship, yielded a tour; an appearance in the seminal pioneer Rock and Roll musical film "Rock Around the Clock" in January 1956; and eventually a recording contract with Mercury Records' Wing Records subsidiary by February 1956.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In May 1956 (two months before Presley recorded his version), Bell and the Bell Boys recorded a more up "tempo" version of the song for Mercury that was over 20 seconds shorter, and that also omitted the comedic "arf arf" dog sounds of their 1955 Teen Records version. However, Mercury did not release this new version until after the success of Presley's version. Initially released in France in late 1956 on an EP "Rock 'n' Roll" (Barclay 14159), it was released subsequently in 1957 in Australia (July 1957: Mercury Records 45152), Sweden ("Rock'n'Roll Vol. 2"; Mercury EP-1-3502), and Norway (Mercury EP MN5). As the legal dispute about its composition had not been resolved, authorship of the Mercury Records version is attributed to Leiber-Stoller-Otis. Mercury finally released Freddie Bell and the Bellboys' new version of "Hound Dog" in the USA on their debut album "Rock & Roll ... All Flavors" (Mercury MG 20289) in January 1958, but now crediting Leiber & Stoller only. Both the 1955 Teen Records (2:45) and the 1956 Mercury Records (2:22) versions of "Hound Dog" are included in the 1996 compilation album "Rockin' Is Our Business " (Germany: Bear Family Records BCD 15901).


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Elvis Presley and his band first encountered "Hound Dog" at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1956. Presley had been booked from April 23 through May 6, 1956 to appear at the Venus Room of the New Frontier Hotel and Casino as an "extra added attraction", third on the bill to the Freddy Martin Orchestra and comedian Shecky Greene.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: It was his first appearance in Las Vegas. However, "because of audience dissatisfaction, low attendance, and unsavory behavior by underage fans", the booking was reduced to one week. Freddie Bell and the Bellboys were still the resident act at the Silver Queen Bar in the Sands, and "Hound Dog" remained a staple for them. Presley and his band attended a performance and loved their burlesque reworking of "Hound Dog". According to Paul W. Papa: "From the first time Elvis heard this song he was hooked. He went back over and over again until he learned the chords and lyrics." When asked about "Hound Dog", Presley's guitarist Scotty Moore and his drummer D. J. Fontana agreed that Elvis had borrowed the Bellboys version after seeing them perform the song live.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In 1992, Leiber and Stoller confirmed that Presley was familiar with Thornton's record of the song but "he didn’t do her version"; he had learned the song from Freddie Bell & The Bellboys.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Presley first added "Hound Dog" to his live performances at the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. Ace Collins indicates that "Far from being the frenetic, hard-driving song that he would eventually record, Elvis' early live renditions of 'Hound Dog' usually moved pretty slowly, with an almost burlesque feel." Presley modelled his performance, particularly his hip gyrations, on the Bellboys version, which was a Las Vegas-style comic burlesque.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Just weeks after they had seen Bell and the Bellboys perform, "Hound Dog" became Elvis and Scotty and Bill's closing number for the first time on May 15, 1956, at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, during the Memphis Cotton Festival before an audience of 7,000. The song remained his standard closer until the late 1960s. By the spring of 1956, Presley was fast becoming a national phenomenon and teenagers came to his concerts in unprecedented numbers, with the enthusiastic reaction – particularly to "Hound Dog" – causing riots at some performances. Presley researcher Guillermo F. Perez-Argüello contends that:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Larry Birnbaum described Elvis Presley's rendition of "Hound Dog" as "an emblem of the rock 'n' roll revolution". George Plasketes argues that Elvis Presley's version of "Hound Dog" should not be considered a cover "since [most listeners] … were innocent of Willie Mae Thornton's original 1953 release". Michael Coyle asserts that "Hound Dog", like almost all of Presley's "covers were all of material whose brief moment in the limelight was over, without the songs having become standards." While, because of its popularity, Presley's recording "arguably usurped the original", Plasketes concludes: "anyone who's ever heard the Big Mama Thornton original would probably argue otherwise." Presley was aware of and appreciated Big Mama Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog", and had a copy in his personal record collection. Ron Smith, a schoolfriend of Presley's, says he remembers Elvis singing along to a version by Tommy Duncan (lead singer for the classic lineup of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys). According to another schoolmate, Elvis' favorite r'n'b song was "Bear Cat (the Answer to Hound Dog)" by Rufus Thomas, a hero of Presley's.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Agreeing with Robert Fink, who claims that "Hound Dog" as performed by Presley was intended as a burlesque, "troping off white overreactions to a black sexual innuendo", Freya Jarman-Ivens asserts that "Presley's version of 'Hound Dog' started its life as a blackface comedy", in the manner of Al Jolson, but more especially "African-American performers with a penchant for 'clowning'Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Jordan. It was Freddie Bell and the Bellboys' performance of the song (with Bell's amended lyrics) that influenced Presley's decision to perform, and later record and release, his own version: "Elvis's version of 'Hound Dog' (1956) came about, not as an attempt to cover Thornton's record, but as an imitation of a "parody" of her record performed by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys… The words, the tempo, and the arrangement of Elvis' 'Hound Dog' come not from Thornton's version of the song, but from the Bellboys'." According to Rick Coleman, the Bellboys' version "featured [Dave] Bartholomew's three-beat Latin riff, which had been heard in Bill Haley's 'Shake, Rattle and Roll'." Just as Haley had borrowed the riff from Bartholomew, Presley borrowed it from Bell and the Bellboys. The Latin riff form that was used in Presley's "Hound Dog" was known as "Habanera rhythm," which is a Spanish and African-American musical beat form. After the release of "Hound Dog" by Presley, the Habanera rhythm gained much popularity in American popular music.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: When asked if Bell had any objections to Presley recording his own version, Bell gave Colonel Tom Parker, Presley's manager, a copy of his 1955 Teen Records' recording, hoping that if Presley recorded it, "he might reap some benefit when his own version was released on an album." According to Bell, "[Parker] promised me that if I gave him the song, the next time Elvis went on tour, I would be the opening act for him—which never happened." In another interview Bell said: "I hope my career is more than giving 'Hound Dog' to Elvis". In May 1956, two months before Presley's release, Bell re-recorded a more frantic version of the song for the Mercury label; however, it was not released as a single until 1957. It was later included on Bell's 1957 album, "Rock & Roll…All Flavors" (Mercury Records MG 20289).


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Presley first performed "Hound Dog" for a nationwide television audience on "The Milton Berle Show" on June 5, 1956. It was his second appearance on Berle's program. At Berle's request, Presley appeared without his guitar, the first time he had done so on national television. By this time, Presley's band had added instrumental flourishes to the song: Scotty Moore had added a guitar solo, and D.J. Fontana had added a drum roll between verses. The performance started in an upbeat tempo in the style of the Bellboys, but dropped to a half tempo for the dramatic finish. Presley's movements during the performance were energetic and sexually charged, especially his hip gyrations, and the reactions of young women in the studio audience were enthusiastic, as shown on the broadcast. According to Robert Fink, "Hound Dog" as performed by Presley on Berle's show was intended to be humorous, "troping off white overreactions to a black sexual innuendo". Over 40,000,000 people saw the performance.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Unfortunately for Presley, the mainstream public did not find the sexually charged performance amusing, and controversy erupted. It was the first major controversy of Presley's career. Letters of protest poured into the NBC mailroom, critics called the performance vulgar, moral watchdogs raised concerns about juvenile delinquency, and even the Catholic Church published an opinion piece entitled "Beware Elvis Presley". The performance earned Presley the sobriquet "Elvis the Pelvis". Ed Sullivan, host of a popular televised variety show, publicly stated that he would never feature Presley. Steve Allen, who had already booked Presley for "The Steve Allen Show" on NBC, faced pressure from network executives to cancel the performance. Allen refused, insisting he would control the performance so it would not offend the public's sensibilities.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Presley appeared on "The Steve Allen Show" on July 1 that year. Steve Allen, who was notoriously contemptuous of rock 'n' roll music and especially songs such as "Hound Dog", ensured that the performance had a comedic bent, cracking jokes and presenting Presley with a signed prop toilet paper roll as a play on the name of the genre. Presley performed in a tuxedo while singing an abbreviated version of "Hound Dog" to an actual top hat-wearing Basset Hound. Presley was reportedly a good sport about the silliness while on the show, but Presley would later recall it as an extremely embarrassing moment. Scotty Moore later suggested that Presley's anger about the way Allen orchestrated the performance drove the aggressive style that he recorded "Hound Dog" in the very next day.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Although Ed Sullivan had publicly stated he would never invite Presley onto his show, the ratings success of Presley's appearance on "The Steve Allen Show" convinced him to reconsider. Sullivan wound up paying $50,000 for Presley to appear on the "Ed Sullivan Show" three times; "Hound Dog" was performed during each appearance. On September 9, 1956, with the song topping several U.S. charts, Presley's set featured an abbreviated version of "Hound Dog". During his second appearance on October 28, Presley jokingly introduced the song as "one of the saddest songs we've ever heard," before playing it in full. In the third and final appearance on January 6, 1957, Presley performed seven songs, including "Hound Dog". This proved to be Presley's last live performance on American television.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: For 7 hours from 2:00 pm on July 2, 1956, the day after the "Steve Allen Show" performance, Presley recorded "Hound Dog" along with "Don't Be Cruel" and "Any Way You Want Me" for RCA Victor at RCA's New York City studio with his regular band of Scotty Moore on lead guitar, Bill Black on bass, D. J. Fontana on drums, and backing vocals from the Jordanaires. Despite its popularity in his live shows, Presley had neither planned nor prepared to record "Hound Dog", but agreed to do so at the insistence of RCA's assigned producer Stephen H. Sholes, who argued that "'Hound Dog' was so identified with Elvis that fans would demand a record of the concert standard." According to Ace Collins: "Elvis may not have wanted to record 'Hound Dog', but he had a definite idea of how he wanted the finished product to sound. Though he usually slowed it down and treated it like a blues number in concert, in the studio Elvis wanted the song to come off as fast and dynamic." While the producing credit was given to Sholes, the studio recordings reveal that Presley produced the songs himself, which is verified by the band members. Gordon Stoker, First Tenor of the Jordanaires, who were chosen to provide backup vocals, recalls: "They had demos on almost everything that Elvis recorded, and we'd take it from the demo. We'd listen to the demo, most of the time, and we'd take it from the demo. We had (Big) Mama Thornton's record on 'Hound Dog', since she had a record on that. After listening to it we actually thought it was awful and couldn't figure out why Elvis wanted to do that." However, what Stoker did not realize was that Presley wanted to record the version he saw in Las Vegas by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys that he had been performing since May. As session pianist Emidio "Shorty Long" Vagnoni left to work on a rehearsal for a stage show, Stoker plays piano on this recording of "Hound Dog". As Stoker was unable to also sing first tenor, "the Jordanaires try to come up with a combined sound as best they can to cover it, and Gordon laughs as he states, 'That's one of the worst sounds we ever got on any record!' However Elvis insists on doing the song, and the results, albeit without Gordon singing tenor, will still do more than please the masses. Gordon also related that Elvis very much knew in his mind what he wanted the final results to be so they didn't spend a lot of time working out tempos."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In response to journalist Dave Schwensen, who said: "I remember reading an interview a few years ago with Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones... "He was talking about the second guitar break on the recording of 'Hound Dog' and said it sounded like you just took off your guitar, dropped it on the floor and it got the perfect sound. He said he's never been able to figure out how you did that.", in 2002 Scotty Moore indicated: "


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Musicologist Robert Fink asserts that "Elvis drove the band through thirty-one takes, slowly fashioning a menacing, rough-trade version quite different than the one they had been performing on the stage." The result of Presley's efforts was an "angry hopped-up version" of "Hound Dog". Citing Presley's anger at his treatment on the "Steve Allen Show" the previous evening, Peter Nazareth sees this recording as "revenge on Steve ("you ain't no friend of mine") Allen, and as a protest at being censored on national TV." In analyzing Presley's recording, Fink asserts that


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In the end, Presley chose version 28, declaring: "This is the one." During the day Presley's manager Colonel Tom Parker told RCA vice president Larry Kananga that "Hound Dog" "may become such a big hit that RCA may have to change its corporate symbol from the 'Victor Dog' to the 'Hound Dog'." After this recording, Presley performed this "angry hopped-up version" of "Hound Dog" in his concerts, and also on his performances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on September 9 and October 28, 1956.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: "Hound Dog" (G2WW-5935) was initially released as the B-side to the single "Don't Be Cruel" (G2WW-5936) on July 13, 1956. Soon after the single was re-released with "Hound Dog" first and in larger print than "Don't Be Cruel" on the record sleeve. Both sides of the record topped "Billboard's" Best Sellers in Stores and Most Played in Jukeboxes charts alongside "Don't Be Cruel", while "Hound Dog" on its own merit topped the country & western and rhythm & blues charts and peaked at number one on "Billboard's" main pop chart, the Top 100. Later reissues of the single by RCA in the 1960s designated the pair as double-A-sided.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By August 18, 1956, Peacock Records had re-released Big Mama Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog", backing it with "Rock-a-Bye Baby" (Peacock 5–1612), but it failed to chart.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Stoller learned of the Presley cover from Leiber after returning from vacation in Europe. He expressed some disappointment in the success of the cover: "It just sounded terribly nervous, too fast, too white. But you know, after it sold seven or eight million records it started to sound better." Leiber and Stoller tired of explaining that Presley had dropped most of their lyrics. For example, Leiber complained about Presley adding the line, "You ain't never caught a rabbit, and you ain't no friend of mine", calling it "inane…It doesn't mean anything to me." Forty years later, Leiber told music journalist Rikky Rooksby that Presley had stamped the hit with his own identity: "(A) white singer from Memphis who's a hell of a singer—he does have some black attitudes—takes the song over… But here's the thing: we didn't make it. His version is like a combination of country and skiffle. It's not black. He sounds like Hank Snow. In most cases where we are attributed with rock and roll, it's misleading, because what we did is usually the original record—which is R&B—and some other producer (and a lot of them are great) covered our original record."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In September 1956, Democratic congressman Emanuel Celler expressed disgusted at "the bad taste that is exemplified by Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' music, with his animal gyrations". In October 1956 "Melody Maker" critic Steve Race reacted negatively to Presley's rendition of "Hound Dog", saying that "for sheer repulsiveness coupled with the monotony of incoherence, Hound Dog hit a new low in my experience." Race later stated: "it is a thoroughly bad record", lacking in "tone, intelligibility, musicianship, taste [and] subtlety", and defying "the decent limits of guitar amplification".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In 1957 Frank Sinatra supported US Senator George Smathers' crusade against "inferior music", including "Hound Dog", which Sinatra sarcastically referred to as "a masterpiece." Oscar Hammerstein II had "a particular loathing of 'Hound Dog'". In 1960, Perry Como told "The Saturday Evening Post": "When I hear 'Hound Dog' I have to vomit a little, but in 1975 it will probably be a slightly ancient classic." Albin J. Zak III, Professor of Music at the State University of New York, Albany, in his inaugural American Musicological Society/Rock & Roll Hall of Fame lecture, "'A Thoroughly Bad Record': Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' as Rock and Roll Manifesto", in October 2011 asserted: "In retrospect… we can recognize defining moments of crystallization… The record was widely scorned by music industry veterans and high-pop aficionados, yet in its rude enthusiasm it represents an emphatic assertion of aesthetic principle at the dawn of rock and roll." In 1997 Bob Dylan indicated that Presley's record influenced his decision to get into music: "What got me into the whole thing in the beginning wasn't songwriting. When 'Hound Dog' came across the radio, there was nothing in my mind that said, 'Wow, what a great song, I wonder who wrote that?'… It was just… it was just there."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Presley's "Hound Dog" sold over 4 million copies in the United States on its first release. It was his best-selling single and, starting in July 1956, it spent eleven weeks at number one—a record not eclipsed until Boyz II Men's "End of the Road" held at the top for 13 weeks in 1992. It stayed in the number one spot until it was replaced by "Love Me Tender", also recorded by Elvis. "Billboard" ranked it as the number two song for 1956. "Hound Dog" would go on to sell 10 million copies worldwide, including 5 million in the United States alone. In 1958 the "Hound Dog"/"Don't Be Cruel" single became just the third record to sell more than three million copies, following Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Gene Autry's "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Despite its commercial success, "Elvis used to say that 'Hound Dog' was the silliest song he'd ever sung and thought it might sell ten or twelve records right around his folks' neighborhood." By the end of summer 1956, after Presley's recording of the song was a million-seller, Freddie Bell, who had introduced the song to Presley in April, told an interviewer: "I didn't feel bad about that at all. In fact, I encouraged him to record it." However, after the success of Presley's recording, "Bell sued to get some of the composer royalties because he had changed the words and indeed the song, and he would have made millions as the songwriter of Elvis's version: but he lost because he did not ask Leiber & Stoller for permission to make the changes and thereby add his name as songwriter."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Presley's final performance on stage for almost 8 years was a benefit concert for the USS Arizona Memorial on Sunday, March 25, 1961, at the Bloch Arena in Pearl Harbor. During this concert, which raised nearly $65,000 the USS Arizona Memorial building fund, Presley closed the concert singing "Hound Dog". Presley performed a high-energy version of "Hound Dog" in his legendary "Comeback Special" that aired on December 3, 1968, on the NBC television network. After the ratings success of this program, on July 31, 1969, Presley returned to perform in Las Vegas for the first time since his unsuccessful performances in April and May 1956. Booked for a four-week, fifty-seven show engagement at the International Hotel, which has just been built and has the largest showroom in the city, "this engagement breaks all existing Las Vegas attendance records and attracts rave reviews from the public and the critics. It is a triumph." Elvis' first live album, "Elvis in Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada" is recorded during this engagement and is soon released. During this concert, Presley introduced "Hound Dog" as his "special song." "Never one to take himself too seriously, Elvis joked with the crowd about the old days and the old songs. At one point, he decided to dedicate his next number to the audience and the staff at the International: 'This is the only song I could think of that really expresses my feeling toward the audience', he said in all earnestness, before bursting into 'Hound Dog'."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Presley performed "Hound Dog" in his historic Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite concert that was the "first entertainment special to be broadcast live around the world," on January 14, 1973. Beamed via Globecam Satellite to Australia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, South Vietnam and other countries, it was also seen on a delayed basis in around thirty European countries. An expanded version was broadcast on NBC in the USA on April 4, 1973, on NBC, attracting 51% of the television viewing audience, and was seen in more American households than the July 1969 Moon landing. Eventually it was seen in about forty countries by one billion to 1.5 billion people.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In 1988, Presley's original 1956 RCA recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In December 2004, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked it No. 19 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the highest ranked of Presley's eleven entries. In March 2005, "Q" magazine placed Presley's version at number 55 of Q Magazine's 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. Presley's version is listed as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: The commercial success of Presley's 1956 RCA version of "Hound Dog" precipitated a proliferation of cover versions, answer songs, and parodies. Additionally, "Hound Dog" was translated into several languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and even Bernese German.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By 1964, Presley's version of "Hound Dog" had been covered over 26 times, and by 1984, there were at least 85 different cover versions of the song, making it "the best-known and most often recorded Rock & Roll song". In July 2013 the official Leiber & Stoller website listed 266 different versions of "Hound Dog", but acknowledged that its list is incomplete. Among the notable artists who have covered Presley's version of "Hound Dog" are: Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps; Jerry Lee Lewis; Chubby Checker; Pat Boone; Sammy Davis, Jr.; Betty Everett; Little Richard; The Surfaris; the Everly Brothers; Junior Wells; the Mothers of Invention; The Easybeats; Jimi Hendrix; Vanilla Fudge; Van Morrison; Conway Twitty; John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band; John Entwistle; Carl Perkins; Eric Clapton; James Taylor; and (in 1993) Tiny Tim (in his full baritone voice). In 1999 David Grisman, John Hartford, and Mike Seeger included "Hound Dawg" on their 1999 album "Retrograss", which was nominated for a Grammy in the Traditional Folk Album category in 2000.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Australian band Sherbet released "Hound Dog" in 1973 as a non-album single, backed with "Can I Drive You Home?". It reached number 18 on the Kent Music Report and appeared at number 21 on the Go-Set year-end chart.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: As Elvis Presley was a major seminal influence on Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and "Hound Dog" was a favorite of the young Lennon and his mother, during The Beatles' early career "Hound Dog" was one of the songs Lennon and McCartney as the Quarrymen later as the Beatles played from August 1957 through 1961. No recorded version is known to survive. On August 30, 1972, Lennon performed the song with the Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band at Madison Square Garden, New York City, in one of his last charity concerts, and was released on his "Live in New York" album on January 24, 1986. John Lennon also recorded "Hound Dog" during his huge rehearsal of early Rock and Roll classics (for the Madison Square Garden concert) that was released on the unauthorized album S.I.R. John Winston Ono Lennon. Tony Sheridan (who was asked to join the young Beatles) also recorded the Presley version of "Hound Dog".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: After the Presley version of "Hound Dog" became a commercial success, Homer and Jethro parodied it as "Houn' Dawg" (RCA Victor 47–6706; 20–6706), including such lines as: "You look like an Airedale, with the air let out". Several parodies emphasized the cross-cultural appeal of Presley's record. Lalo "Pancho Lopez" Guerrero, the father of Chicano music, released a parody version in 1956 entitled "Pound Dog" (L&M LM1002) about a chihuahua. In January 1957, Jewish American satirist Mickey Katz released a Yinglish novelty song version, "You're a Doity Dog" (Capitol F3607), singing with a Yiddish accent, and having a klezmer break between verses. In this "freilach"-rock song, Katz sang "You ain't nothin' but a paskudnick". By March 1957, veteran country singer Cliff Johnson responded to the popularity of Presley's "Hound Dog" by recording his self-penned "Go 'Way Hound Dog (Let Me Sing My Blues)" (Columbia 4-40865; Australia: Coronet Records KW-022), described in "Billboard" as "rockabilly that professes satiation with rockabilly music." In 1991, Elvis "translator" El Vez, backed by The Memphis Mariachis, released "(You Ain't Nothin' But A) Chihuahua", a "Chicano Power parody" that opens with: "You ain't nothin' but a Chihuahua/ Yapping all the time."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Encouraged by the 1994 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in "Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc." that "ruled that… musicians do not have to obtain permission from the original artists to perform and record parodies of those compositions", other parodies of "Hound Dog" emerged subsequently. These include "Found God", a self-acknowledged parody of Presley's version by popular Christian band ApologetiX, which, using the original tune, opens with: "I ain't nothin' but I found God/It took quite a long time".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Over the years "Hound Dog" "has been the subject of an inordinate number of lawsuits", and "would eventually become one of the most litigated songs in recorded music history".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On September 9, 1952, the copyright application for "Hound Dog" was lodged. On the application the words & music are attributed to Don Deadric Robey & Willie Mae Thornton, with the copyright claimants listed as: "Murphy L. Robey (W) & Willie Mae Thornton (A). It was renewed subsequently on May 13, 1980, with the same details.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By the end of 1953 at least six "answer songs" that responded to 'Big Mama' Thornton's original version of "Hound Dog" were released. According to Peacock Records's Don Robey, these songs were "bastardizations" of the original and reduced its sales potential. These included:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: However, the most popular of the answer songs to "Hound Dog" was "Bear Cat (The Answer To Hound Dog)" (Sun 181) recorded by Memphis disc jockey Rufus Thomas (adopting the nickname, "Rufus 'Hound Dog' Thomas") at Sun Studios at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis.on March 8, 1953, just two weeks after Thornton's original version was released, and even before a review of "Hound Dog" had been published in "Billboard", While retaining the same melody as "Hound Dog", Sun founder Sam Phillips wrote new lyrics, in which he altered the gender of the singer, who bemoaned that his woman was a "bear cat", a Jazz Age slang term for "a hot-blooded or fiery girl". The record's spare electric guitar work by Memphis bluesman Joe Hill Louis was greatly influenced by that of Pete Lewis on the original. According to James M. Salem:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: By the end of March, "Bear Cat" was in stores, prompting "Billboard" to describe it as "the fastest answer song to hit the market". It became both Thomas' and Sun Records' first hit, eventually reaching number three on the R&B charts. However, as Phillips claimed a writing credit for the song, a copyright-infringement suit ensued that nearly bankrupted Phillips' record label.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On March 28, "Billboard" reported that, "In an effort to combat what has become a rampant practice by small labels—the rushing out of answers which are similar in melody and/or theme to ditties which have become smash hits—many pubbers are now retaining attorneys. Common practice, of course is to regard the answer as an original. Currently publishers are putting up a fight to protect their originals from unauthorised or infringing answers." In that same issue, Robey told "Billboard" he had notified the Harry Fox publishing agency "to issue Sun a license on 'Bear Cat' in order that Robey might collect a royalty".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On April 4, 1953, Robey wrote to Phillips that, "unless contracts are signed and in the office of Mr. Harris Fox by Wednesday, April 8, 1953, I will be forced to take immediate steps with Court Actions", hoping "this will not cause any unfriendly relations, but please remember that I have to pay when I intrude upon the rights of others, and certainly must protect my own rights." On April 11 Bob Rolontz reported in "Billboard": "The answers to r&b tunes, which have become prolific with the many replies to such smash hits as 'I Don't Know', 'Mama' and 'Hound Dog' are being given a serious scrutiny by the original copyright holders of the tunes on the original hit waxings. It appears they do not think too highly of writing an answer to a hit unless a license is obtained and permission to write a parody is given by the publisher." On the prior page, Peacock Records placed an advertisement promoting Thornton's release as "The Original Version of 'Hound Dog'", warning: "Beware of Imitations – Follow the Leader for Good Results" before reminding the reader: "The Original – The Best". Two pages later, Intro Records touted the version by Tommy Duncan and the Miller Bros. as "Best of them all!!!"


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Their requests for payment having been ignored, Robey and two other music publishers initiated unprecedented legal proceedings in April against the record companies that released these competing songs, alleging copyright infringement. As a result, Chess Records withdrew Brim's "Rattlesnake" from sale. In the Memphis courts, Lion Publishing Co. sought royalties and treble damages, claiming "Bear Cat" was "a dead steal". In May, Phillips responded: "There's a lot of difference in the words. As for the tune, there's practically no melody, but a rhythm pattern", adding that it is hard to differentiate between any two 12-bar blues songs. By June 1953 in a "precedent-setting" decision the Court ruled against Phillips, and upheld the charges of plagiarism, finding the tune and some of the lyrics of "Bear Cat" to be identical to those of "Hound Dog". Phillips was ordered to pay 2% of all of the profits of "Bear Cat" plus court costs. As this amounted to $35,000 compensation, Phillips was reduced to near bankruptcy, ultimately forcing him to sell Elvis Presley's Sun contract to RCA for $35,000 to raise the funds to settle his debts. On June 4, 1953, "Jet" reported that:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: On July 8 Robey wrote to Phillips again, thanking him "kindly for your co-operation in this matter", but Phillips still refused to purchase a mechanical license for Thomas' "Bear Cat". Robey then instructed his company lawyer Irving Marcus to sue Phillips and Sun Records, hoping to use this as a test case to determine the legal status of all answer songs. While earlier pressings of Sun 181 bore the caption "(The Answer To Hound Dog)" above the A-side title, as a result of the legal action this was removed from all later pressings. In the 1980s, Sam Phillips conceded: "I should have known better. The melody was exactly the same as theirs, but we claimed the credit for writing the damn thing".


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In late July 1953 Syd Nathan, president of King Records, took Robey and his Lion Publishing Company to court. The August 1, 1953 "BillBoard" reported: "Lion [Music] itself was in court defending the contention of in Cincinnati that he had an interest in the song 'Hound Dog' and should have a fifty per cent share of its success." Nathan claimed that Valjo Music, one of King Records' publishing affiliates, had legal rights to the song as Johnny Otis, who claimed to be a co-author, was under exclusive contract to them at the time. An article entitled "New Howl Goes Up Over 'Hound Dog' Infringement" in "The Pittsburgh Courier" of August 8, 1953 reported:


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In response, Robey counter-sued both King Records and Valjo Music over Roy Brown's answer record, and also over Little Esther's cover record (King 12126). When the dust settled, the publishing for "Hound Dog" (in all variations) remained with Lion, and writing credit with Leiber and Stoller. In April, 1954, "Billboard"'s Rolontz summed up the events thusly: "The year 1953 saw an important precedent set in regard to answer tunes … since the 'Hound Dog' decision, few record firms have attempted to 'answer' smash hits by other companies by using same tune with different lyrics."


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: The most protracted lawsuit involving "Hound Dog" was "Valjo Music Publishing Corporation v. Elvis Presley Music" that was initiated in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in October 1956, after the commercial success of Elvis Presley's version of the song, and concluded in December 1957. It would be the first "legal spat" for Presley's publishing company, Elvis Presley Music.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Leiber and Stoller were introduced to Otis in July 1952 by Federal Records' Ralph Bass when Otis needed songs for artists he was recording for Federal, including Little Esther, Little Willie Littlefield, and Bobby Nunn of The Robins. In exchange for Otis using their songs, Leiber and Stoller gave Otis a one-third interest in those songs and assigned the publishing to Otis' company, Valjo Music Publishing Company. Similarly, on August 30, 1952, Leiber and Stoller signed a contract with Spin Music Inc.—another publishing company in which Otis held an interest—assigning it certain rights to "Hound Dog" and some other songs in exchange for royalties to be divided equally between Leiber, Stoller, and Otis. When the song was copyrighted initially on September 9, 1952, words and music were credited to Don Deadric Robey and Willie Mae Thornton, with Lion Publishing Co. identified as the registered publisher. However, on March 26, 1953, it was credited to Leiber, Stoller, and Otis; and Valjo Music—not Spin—was the registered publisher.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: According to the findings of the court in "Valjo Music Publishing Corporation v. Elvis Presley Music": "Thereafter Otis, in apparent disregard of the contracts both with Spin Music Inc. and plaintiff, arranged to have 'Hound Dog' published by Lion Music Publishing Company of Houston, Texas, and released by its affiliate Peacock Records. Otis executed a writer-publisher contract on October 10, 1952, with Lion Music Publishing Company in which Leiber, Otis and Stoller were described as the writers of 'Hound Dog.'" Thus, Otis received a co-writing credit with Leiber and Stoller on Thornton's Peacock Records release and on all of the 1953 cover versions. The court also noted: "Otis signed not only his name but also signed—or perhaps forged—the names of Stoller and Leiber to it. The president or proprietor of Lion Music Publishing Company noted the similarity of the handwriting of the signatures and made contact with Leiber and Stoller who advised him that Otis had no authority to sign their names to the agreement and that Otis was not a co-author of the song, although he was entitled to receive one-third of the royalties. Lion then arranged for a contract with Leiber and Stoller alone for the publishing rights." In order for Leiber and Stoller to execute the contract with Lion—"which, because we were underage, had to be signed by our mothers"—a court appointed Mary Stein (for Leiber) and Adelyn Stoller (for Stoller) as their legal guardians in late April 1953. The contract assigned the publishing for "Hound Dog" to Lion. Otis' credit was omitted from all subsequent records. Following on the popularity of Elvis' live and televised performances of "Hound Dog", Elvis Presley Music made the acquisition of half the publishing for the song from Lion Music a precondition to issuing a recording, to which Robey assented.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: In October 1956, the success of Presley's version (sales at that time exceeded 2 million copies) prompted Valjo to sue Leiber and Stoller and Elvis Presley Music (an affiliate of Hill & Range Songs) for an accounting of profits and for damages and to have Otis restored as co-writer and recover damages for lost royalties. In "Valjo Music Publishing Corporation v. Elvis Presley Music", Otis as plaintiff alleged that he was the co-author of "Hound Dog" along with two defendants, Leiber and Stoller. The defendants denied that Otis wrote any part of the song. On August 26, 1956, Otis signed a release of any claims to the song in exchange for $750. In court, Otis claimed that he had done so because he had learned that the defendants were legally infants at the time of the original contracts in 1952, and would, therefore, disaffirm any contract that they had with him. This made no sense to the United States Southern District of Court of New York: "Otis was a man who had many years experience in the music business. He must have realized that even though Leiber and Stoller were infants they could not disaffirm his co-authorship of a song, if in fact he had been a co-author." Further, while Leiber and Stoller acknowledged that they had given Otis one-third of the mechanical rights for the original Thornton recording, they denied giving him one-third authorship credit. On December 4, 1957, Federal Court Judge Archie O. Dawson dismissed Valjo's claim in the New York Federal Court, on the basis that Otis was "unworthy of belief", that he admitted forging Leiber and Stoller's signatures on a declaration to third-party publisher Lion Music, that Leiber and Stoller were underage at the time, and that Otis had signed a release to any claims for $750. As the evidence would not sustain Valjo's contention that Otis had collaborated in the writing of "Hound Dog", the Court voided Leiber and Stoller's contract, ordered Otis to pay the legal costs of the defendants, and awarded 46.25% of the song to Leiber and Stoller, with Lion Music receiving 28.75% and Elvis Presley Music receiving the final 25%.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Despite the Court's findings, Otis continued to claim that he wrote the third verse and rewrote some of the lyrics in the second verse—including adding "You made me feel so bad. You make me weep and moan. You ain't looking for a woman. You're looking for a home"—and edited out what he described later as "derogatory crap". In 2000, Otis claimed: "Leiber and Stoller brought me the song, 'Hound Dog,'" Otis recalls, of the time he produced Big Mama Thornton's recording of what was to become an R&B, and then rock 'n' roll, classic. "Parts of it weren't really acceptable. I didn't like that reference to chicken and watermelon, said 'Let's get that crap out of there.'... This came out and was a big smash, and everything was all right. I had half the publishing rights and one third of the song-writing. Then Elvis Presley made it a mega hit, and they got greedy. They sued me in court. They won, they beat me out of it. I could have sent my kids to college, like they sent theirs," Otis said. "But, oh well, if I dwell on that I get quite unhappy, so we try to move on." However, Leiber and Stoller maintained consistently and emphatically that Otis was ""not" a writer of the song" (emphasis theirs).


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: As he had provided lyrics for the version of "Hound Dog" recorded by Presley, Freddie Bell "sued to get some of the composer royalties because he had changed the words and indeed the song, and he would have made millions as the songwriter of Elvis' version: but he lost because he did not ask Leiber & Stoller for permission" to make those changes.


title: Hound Dog (song)

text: Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI) is the performing rights organization for "Hound Dog" (BMI Work #94632, ISWC # T-905246869-6), while Sony/ATV SONGS LLC owns the publishing rights.


title: Susan Rice

text: Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American diplomat, policy advisor, and public official serving as Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Rice served as the 27th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and as the 23rd U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Stanford University and New College, Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and received a DPhil (PhD). She served on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff from 1993 to 1997 and was the assistant secretary of state for African affairs at the State Department from 1997 to 2001. Appointed at age 32, Rice was at the time the youngest person to have served as a regional assistant secretary of state. Rice's tenure saw significant changes in U.S.–Africa policy, including the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, support for democratic transitions in South Africa and Nigeria, and an increased U.S. focus on fighting HIV/AIDS.


title: Susan Rice

text: A former Brookings Institution fellow, Rice served as a foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. After Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Rice was nominated as Ambassador to the United Nations. The Senate confirmed her by unanimous consent on January 22, 2009. During her tenure at the United Nations, Rice championed a human rights and anti-poverty agenda, elevated climate change and LGBT and women's rights as global priorities, and committed the U.S. to agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. She also defended Israel at the Security Council, pushed for tough sanctions against Iran and North Korea, and advocated for U.S. and NATO intervention in Libya in 2011.


title: Susan Rice

text: Mentioned as a possible replacement for retiring United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2012, Rice withdrew from consideration following controversy related to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi. President Barack Obama instead named her National Security Advisor in 2013, where she supported U.S. efforts on the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, the Ebola epidemic, the reopening to Cuba, and the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2021, Rice became the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Biden administration.


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice was born in Washington D.C., to education policy scholar Lois Rice (née Dickson), who helped design the federal Pell Grant subsidy system and who joined the Brookings Institution in 1992; and Emmett J. Rice (1919–2011), a Cornell University economics professor and the second black governor of the Federal Reserve System. Her maternal grandparents were Jamaican immigrants to Portland, Maine; her paternal grandparents were the descendants of enslaved Africans and from South Carolina. Her parents divorced when Rice was ten years of age. In 1978, her mother married Alfred Bradley Fitt, an attorney, who at the time was general counsel of the U. S. Congressional Budget Office.


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice said that her parents taught her to "never use race as an excuse or advantage," and as a young girl she "dreamed of becoming the first U.S. senator from the District of Columbia".


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice was a three-letter varsity athlete, student government president, and valedictorian at National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., a private girls' day school. She attended Stanford University, where she won a Truman Scholarship and graduated with a BA with honors in history in 1986. She was also awarded a National Merit Scholarship and elected Phi Beta Kappa her junior year.


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice attended New College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where she earned Master of Philosophy (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees, both in International Relations. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled "Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979–1980: Implications for International Peacekeeping". Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, honored her dissertation as the UK's most distinguished in international relations. During her time at Oxford, Rice was a member of the Oxford University Women's Basketball Team.


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice served as a foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis during his campaign in the 1988 presidential election. She was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, from 1990 to early 1992. Rice worked in McKinsey's Toronto office.


title: Susan Rice

text: Rice served in the Clinton administration in various capacities: at the National Security Council (NSC) from 1993 to 1997 (as director for international organizations and peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995, and as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs from 1995 to 1997); and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 to 2001. Rice's tenure saw significant changes in U.S.-Africa policy, including the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, support for democratic transitions in South Africa and Nigeria, and an increased U.S. focus on fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.