Hound Dog | Chords + Lyrics
Verse 1
| N.C | C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
| F | F7 F | C7 | C7 |
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
| G (G7) | F (F7) | N.C | N.C |
Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Verse 2
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
Well, they said you was high-classed. Well, that was just a lie.
| F | F F7 | C7 | C7 |
Yeah, they said you was high-classed. Well, that was just a lie.
| G (G7) | F (F7) | N.C | N.C |
Yeah, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Verse 3
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
| F | F7 F | C7 | C7 |
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
| G (G7) | F (F7) | N.C | N.C |
Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Solo 1
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
| F (F7) | F (F7) | C7 | C7 |
| G (G7) | F (F7) | C7 | C7 |
Verse 4
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
Well, they said you was high-classed. Well, that was just a lie.
| F | F7 F | C7 | C7 |
Yeah, they said you was high-classed. Well, that was just a lie.
| G (G7) | F (F7) | N.C | N.C |
Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Solo 2
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
| F (F7) | F (F7) | C7 | C7 |
| G (G7) | F (F7) | C7 | C7 |
Verse 5
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
Well, they said you was high-classed. Well, that was just a lie.
| F | F7 F | C7 | C7 |
Yeah, they said you was high-classed. Well, that was just a lie.
| G (G7) | F (F7) | N.C | N.C |
Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Verse 6
| C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
| F | F7 F | C7 | C7 |
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
| G (G7) N.C | N.C | N.C | Db6/9 C6/9 |
Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Hound Dog Chords: Learn the progressions
What exact chords Elvis himself plays on the acoustic is not that interesting or important, it’s what his side man, Scotty Moore, does that we all want to find out more about.
Or perhaps even more importantly, what can you do if called upon to play Hound Dog in a live band, as the only guitarist?
As a member, I’ll give you the essential bits (using TAB of course) so you can play this Elvis classic in a band.
We start with what Scotty did note for note, then modify it as what he played worked because his guitar doesn’t have much low end and there’s double bass.
If you play this with an electric bass player and a fuller guitar sound, things will get too muddy so after looking at Scotty’s part – we modify it!
Once you got the TAB down and decided how much of Scotty’s original part and my modified ideas you want to use, you could just read the chords as a reminder, like this:
||: C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
| F | F7 F | C7 | C7 |
| G (G7) | F (F7) | N.C | N.C :||
The solo chords are the same, just playing a C7 in the last two bars rather than stopping. Speaking of the solo, you get TAB for this too, and could use those ideas for another hundred songs in this style!
Here’s a link to the full lesson: Hound Dog – Guitar Lesson with TAB.
Hound Dog was one of many covers Elvis sang!
A classic among early Rock N’ Roll tunes, Elvis’s Hound Dog shook the world and got all the girls screaming.
It wasn’t actually his own composition, or a tune written for him as he would experience later in his career. Hound Dog was a Big Mama Thornton cover, but Elvis certainly made it his own.
The writers, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, initially didn’t like Elvis’s version. Apparently, it sounded too white, but claimed that 7-8 million sales later, it started to sound better to them!
Lieber and Stoller would later write Jailhouse Rock, Love Me, Loving You, Don’t, and King Creole for Elvis.
Hound Dog Chords | Related Pages
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Elvis Presley didn’t just change music by popularising Rock N Roll and becoming the world’s first superstar, he changed the world.
Hits include Jailhouse Rock, Heartbreak Hotel, Don’t Be Cruel, Blue Suede Shoes, In The Ghetto, Suspicious Minds, and (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear.
Elvis Presley on the web
Rock n Roll & Early Pop
As popular music was starting to take shape, the earliest styles that came out of Jazz and Blues were Rock n Roll & Early Pop.
Learn tunes by The Beatles, Elvis, The Monkees, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, and The Rolling Stones.
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about Hound Dog chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
