Textbook

For blues hounds and history-loving fans of classic rock, this is textbook stuff. For the rest of you, no, Elvis Presley was not the first artist to record “Hound Dog”. That honor goes to Big Mama Thornton.

As gifted as Elvis was — and he was a musical genius — he could not touch Big Mama Thornton’s performance of “Hound Dog”. This is the way the blues — and not coincidentally, rock n roll — should sound.

As you may know, I've transferred most of these posts from my long-running Tumblr blog, Sunday Is For Sounds. While I was on Tumblr, the original post was re-shared by not-bridget, who added some essential information from the Handbook of Texas:

Duke and Peacock were two record labels that were influential in shaping the course of American blues, rhythm and blues, gospel, and soul music after World War II. They were also notable as what music historian Roger Wood has called “the largest and most influential African American-owned-and-operated record conglomerate in the world during the 1950s and early 1960s.”