Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

This is “Hound Dog” by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton:

…or the song that made Elvis famous. Jon Spencer said the key ingredients for rock ‘n’ roll are sex and menace, and where Elvis seems to have those things, or anyway, seemed to in comparison to everything else around him on the radio or Ed Sullivan Show, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s version of the Lieber and Stoller ditty makes the future King look a little bit like a declawed kitten at first base.  Big Mama wields the sex with menace, and the menace with sex–there’s no separating the two, and she lets the hound dog know it. After three minutes of Big Mama whoopin’ his ass, that dog won’t know whether to stick his tail between his legs, or someplace else entirely. Elvis borrowed it, and made it famous, but he didn’t come anywhere near making it better.