Big Mama Thornton – Hound Dog (1952)

Having been waylaid by the need to post Elvis Presley’s haunting take on “Blue Moon”, I feel honour bound to point out that he could also be a bit crap. In particular, his rather tedious and formulaic take on Hound Dog pales into insignificance against Big Mama Thornton’s definitive, proto swamp blues (ahem) reading of the song. The vocal and the guitar are so good on this that the intervening 59 years might never have happened.