Quick ThoughtYou ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine
These lines reflect the most significant lyrical revisions that songwriter Freddie Bell made when he cleaned up the song for the mass market.
Deep ThoughtIn the original version of the song, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and sung by Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, the lyrics say:
You ain't nothing but a hound dog,
Been snoopin' round my door,
You can wag your tail,
But I ain't gonna feed you no more.
To spell it out, the line basically suggests that the singer will no longer reward her "hound dog" visitor with sex. It almost goes without saying that this line was too racy for mainstream audiences. So, Freddie Bell, of Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, rewrote it, along with a few others.
The revised lyrics strip the verse of its sexual innuendo and leave it largely meaningless. But, according to insiders, even without the suggestive lyric, the song carried an edge. "Hound Dog" co-writer Jerry Lieber says that the song's most famous line was "just code for 'You ain't nothin' but a m-----f----r.'" (Source)
