After learning that it wasn’t a prank phone call, he gladly accepted and joined the band in 1966. When Canadian vocalist and keyboardist Burton Cummings received a telephone call to consider joining The Guess Who in the 1960s, he initially thought someone was playing a cruel joke on him. Of course, the fact that it sold more than seven million copies took the sting out of what seemed to be a capricious change of lyrics.” Mike Stoller wrote that Elvis was, “a guy with undeniable charisma and a kind of rhythmic irresistibility, not to me mention a damn good voice.” You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.’ The song is not about a dog. You can wag your tail, but I ain’t gonna feed you no more,’ but Elvis sang, ‘You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time. I had written, ‘You ain’t nothing but a hound dog.
In the Leiber and Stoller 2009 book Hound Dog, Jerry Leiber wrote, “Somebody changed the lyrics. The A side was written by Otis Blackwell and the flip side was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, originally for Big Mama Thornton, as a blues song in 1952. It was also his first single to have a picture sleeve. “Don’t Be Cruel”/“Hound Dog” became Elvis Presley’s biggest selling single, spending eleven weeks at No.