Hound Dog - Elvis Presley - MP3 instrumental karaoke

Originally written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and first brought off the page by US R&B dynamo Big Mama Thornton in 1952 – who sold over two million copies – Elvis Presley made "Hound Dog" his own in 1959, giving the blues song a snarling rock 'n' roll makeover and taking it to the top of the Billboard charts. It stuck around there for 11 weeks, only to be beaten by Elvis Presley's own track, "Love Me Tender." Featuring lyrics that weren't in the Big Mama Thornton original ("Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit / And you ain't no friend of mine"), Elvis Presley took the baton from lounge act Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, who added the comedic "arf arf" sound to their version of "Hound Dog," which they had been performing live for a few years prior; Elvis Presley and his band first heard "Hound Dog" at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1956 and decided to give it a whirl. In June that year, Elvis Presley introduced his "Hound Dog" to America on The Milton Berle Show, with his incendiary performance leading to his "Elvis the Pelvis" nickname. He later bagged one of his biggest hits and one of the best-selling singles of all time.