"You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog"

I'm sending out a big woofety-woof-woof to all my dog pals out there, you know who you are. So, I know we talk about this all the time, but honestly our furless-bipeds can be infuriatingly clueless sometimes. Let me give you my latest example:
yesterday my mamas take me out for a good romp in Memphis. I'm off leash, running back and forth between them, getting my ya-yas out. It's a bright sunny day and pretty hot, so before long I'm ready for a drink. Lo-and-behold, down below us is this big wide river full of the kind of mud that feels so good in your fur when you're hot and itchy. The banks are steep, but nothing I can't handle so I start heading down, and I've only gotten a tiny ways before my mama's start hollering at me. They've got that tone that makes me, against my better judgement, stop in my tracks, turn around, and come back. Instead of a good muddy swim, I get a plastic bowl of luke-warm water from the RV.

NOT the slope to the river that Marley tried to go down

View of the Mississippi

After this, they drive over to the Sun Record Studio and leave me in the stupid RV while they go on a tour. When they come back, they tell me that one of the most anti-canine songs ever recorded, Elvis' "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog," was actually written by Big Mama Thornton who wanted to find a low-down dirty slur for her cheating lover. Hound dog? Really? Why not call him something really nasty, like "You ain't nothin' but a veterinarian?" or "You ain't nothin' but a vacuum cleaner?" Anyhow, turns out Sun Records made it a big hit when some singer named Rufus Thomas stole the tune but switched the lyrics around so he could complain about his no-good-mean-woman, singing, "You ain't nothin' but a bear cat, scratchin' round my door." Now that's a putdown I can support. I'd bark my head off at any bear cat trying to get in our door. Why Elvis had to go and change it back, I don't know.

Old recording studio at Sun Records

Elvis' high school diploma

1950 RCA lathe recorder

"The Million Dollar Quartet" Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash

Example in studio of how Johnny Cash invented a way to make a percussion sound with his guitar. It was considered too "produced" to have a drum set in early blues recordings, so Cash improvised in the studio (He held down all the strings and strummed a "chord" across the dollar bill).

Guitars still in use for recordings in studio now days

The studio is still in use several times a week

Anyhow, after all this, we go on a really really long walk through Memphis. I can report that the squirrels here are smaller and browner than ours, and that I did my duty of keeping them all in the trees. Anyhow, we're all getting pretty tired and hungry when we turn down the most wonderful street in the world. The air smelled so good I felt like my nose was floating right off my face. Mama Laurie said, "Hey, that's Big Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. I read about that in one of my cooking magazines." At that, Mama Catlin pops inside and a few minutes later, comes out with a greasy paper bag of heaven. I did an oh-my-god-oh-my-god dance until Catlin reached into the bag and gave me my first ever bite of fried chicken. I couldn't stop dancing. Turns out that even though Catlin is 7 years-old in dog years, she's also never had fried chicken before and she's pretty excited about it, too. So here's where I get back to humans being clueless -- I mean if I were them, I'd eat Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken every day of my life. Tonight, I'm going to curl up in bed in the RV, lick the very last bits of Gus grease off my whiskers, and dream that there ain't nothin' but a big ol' fried chicken scratchin' at my door….

Big Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken