Social media has an annoying habit of ablating any remaining desire for good intellectual hygiene, so I recently clicked on a video of Joy Reid. Since being dumped from MSNBC, Reid has been making the podcast rounds. And the 40-second clip is vintage Reid; she accuses white people writ large of not being able to invent anything, rewriting history, and caps it off with a bizarre rant about Elvis that, well, completely rewrites history:
Elvis grew up in housing projects in Memphis alongside black people, credited black artists and showed them nothing but respect throughout his career, and generally did wonders for civil rights. As for Elvis stealing “his main song” from an “overweight black woman,” Reid simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Yes, Big Mama Thornton did record “Hound Dog” a few years before Elvis, but she didn’t write the song. It was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two Jewish white guys.
Thornton had a long career, albeit one hampered by pretty serious alcoholism, and died at 57. Big Mama Thornton deserves real credit for her contributions to the blues and rock and roll, but she was no Elvis, and he didn’t steal anything from her. “Hound Dog” has been recorded more than 250 times, including by several other artists in the four years between the release of Thornton and Elvis’ versions. Suffice to say, there’s plenty of reasons besides race why Elvis sold 10 million copies of “Hound Dog,” even if the 500,000 Thornton sold was nothing to sneeze at.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member