The song’s about men in prison (despite the “county jail” line - the film takes place in a state prison) dancing with each other and looking for partners. There’s even the line “You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see.” You have to admit, that sounds somewhat gay.
Anyone think this was an early attempt to get a pro-gay statement into pop culture or just a coincidence?
My opinion is that the song’s composers, Leiber and Stoller, were urban hipsters who liked being the only white guys into R&B in the early 50s – they found Elvis’s act kind of ridiculous and were trying to put one over on him (same as with having him do “Hound Dog,” which they wrote from a woman’s perspective). I don’t have anything to back this up, though.
The songs were written in a hurry and under pressure. It seems extremely unlikely that the pro-gay sentiment was intended for anything but novelty value, and to be the title song for Elvis’s movie.
From der Wiki:
Before pre-production began, songwriters Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber were commissioned to integrate the film’s soundtrack. In April, Leiber and Stoller were called for a meeting in New York City to show the progress of the repertoire. The writers, who had not produced any material, toured the city and were confronted in a hotel room by Jean Aberbach, who locked them into their hotel room by blocking the hotel room door with a sofa until they wrote the material. Presley recorded the soundtrack at Radio Recorders in Hollywood on April 30 and May 3, with an additional session at the MGM Soundstage on May 9. During post-production, the songs were dubbed into the films scenes, in which Presley mimed the lyrics.
I have no recollection of JR being considered that way - it is typically positioned as a movie-song toss-off that happened to be a hit song that endured. But I hear about the sexual language of Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and others regularly, but not Jailhouse Rock. I think of it as more a case of Movie Musical Song Innocence…#47 said to #3, you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see…
So what else could it be about? Was the prison co-ed?
I just thought it was goofy movie-jail guys dancing - no subtext intended, just “hey this is the dance number in the jail movie, so let’s dance…”
I agree with WordMan. Homosexuality was not something mentioned in serious movies, let alone comedies. This is of the same school as Bob Hope and Milton Berle dressing in drag on comedy specials.
It’s a county jail, not a prison – the latter term is normally reserved for state or federal institutions. It doesn’t seem surprising to me that a county might have only one jail instead of maintaining two separate facilities for male and female prisoners.
If the OP’s theory is true, we need to examine Stalag 17, and *Bridge on the River Kwai *as well. Probably about a dozen other movies made way back when as well.
Hell, Stalag 17 had two dudes dancing with each other right on the movie poster - and one of them is in his underwear!
No. It’s pretty well unthinkable for the time and a song about guys having sex in jail wouldn’t really work as a pro-gay rights statement now, nevermind in the mid-50s. I know it’s a copout to say you’re taking a novelty song too seriously because it’s not meant to be scrutinized this way, but I think it’s the truth here.
A quick look at Wikipedia shows there are a lot of mistakes here. Elvis started playing “Hound Dog” because he and his band saw another male performer doing the song and liked it. (There were a couple of changes to the lyrics, too. The original makes a bit more sense.) Leiber and Stoller had nothing to do with the cover and I don’t think they were aware of Elvis’ version until it became a hit. That’s not surprising because in those days you would have expected someone more powerful than the songwriter to decide what songs an artist was going to play.
You’re right about the chronology of “Hound Dog.” However, Leiber and Stoller were also producers who’d made a bunch of hit recordings, not just a songwriting team. Like I said, this is just a hunch of mine, and I don’t have any evidence.
I thought their success as producers came later, but I could be wrong. They definitely didn’t make Elvis record Hound Dog as a joke, so I’m guessing the rest of the theory doesn’t hold up either.
Big Mama Thornton recorded “Hound Dog” first–in 1952.
The lyric is not literal. It’s about a rock and roll dance at the jail, which was far from standard procedure, and the assumption is that there are women there, too. Not everything is meant to be taken literally.
As an aside, for years I thought the lyrics of ‘Hound Dog’ included the line “I sure would be delighted when you’re pumping me.” I was always amazed that such a dirty line got on the radio for all those years.
Turns out he’s actually saying “I sure would be delighted with your company.”
You kind of had to have been alive at the time to realize just HOW forbidden the whole topic of homosexuality was (at least within the American middle class where I came from). It was a concept something like the Boogie Man–everyone vaguely knew what it was, and that it was scary, but no one genuinely believed it existed. Thus, a lot of humor that now seems as though it could mean nothing else was then accidental, or seen as simple absurdity.
Er…no. Not at all actually. They were huge fans of Elvis and worked with him a lot. There wasn’t any real subtext beyond finding so something that rhymed. And they may have been white guys but they wrote some of the best R&B anyone has ever written.
I used to wonder about, “The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang,” until I found out that the Purple Gang was real and not to be trifled with.
…and how about the bondage reference in “Teddy Bear”-- “put a chain around my neck, and lead me anywhere”… Elvis’s whole catalog was sexually way ahead of its time 
That’s not a lyric from Hound Dog; at least not from the Elvis version.
