(Credits: Far Out / MGM)
Tue 9 December 2025 17:30, UK
It is hard to imagine where we would be without the advent of rock and roll, but when those rebellious sounds first emerged onto the airwaves back in the 1950s, the rest of the musical establishment didn’t quite know how to react. For Frank Sinatra, the chosen reaction was one of dismissal and disgust.
That anti-rock reaction perhaps shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, though. After all, Sinatra was already firmly on the upper echelon of the American music scene by the time that the likes of Elvis Presley and Little Richard arrived on the scene, and his velvety crooning was deemed far more mature and substantial than the pithy two-minute rock songs that began populating the charts.
Upon its initial introduction, rock was viewed as little more than an adolescent fad, in the same way that the flapper jazz of the 1920s had been, so nobody – and especially not ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ – was expecting it to snowball into the dominant musical genre, still commanding the attention of the masses over half a century later.
During one interview with Western World back in 1957, Sinatra espoused the extent of his resentment for rock and roll’s emergence, declaring, “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons.” That particular quote is certainly not awash with ambiguity over the crooner’s view of rock music, but there was one figure who drew his ire more than most: Elvis Presley.
In the way that your grandparents think every video game console is a Nintendo, Elvis Presley seemed to encapsulate the entirety of rock and roll during those early days, so by throwing a multitude of insults towards the quiffed rocker, Sinatra was essentially attacking the entire rock landscape. By 1960, though, the pair had developed enough of a mutual respect to perform together on the Welcome Home Elvis television special, but even that couldn’t quell Sinatra’s hatred for certain Elvis anthems.
At one point, in fact, Sinatra introduced ‘The Girls I Never Kissed’, penned by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, by insulting one of their most successful efforts, ‘Hound Dog’, popularised by Presley.
“‘It’s a marvellous song written by a couple of kids who, strangely enough, used to write for Elvis Presley and do all those rock things,” the crooner started. “And suddenly they grew older, and now they write pretty songs, ballads, you know, not the ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Wolf Dog’ and all those other ‘Mother’s Ass’ things they used to do – stupid, goddamn songs.”
Aside from being a rather aggressive introduction to a song, Sinatra’s dismissal of one of the most iconic rock songs of all time is pretty out of pocket, especially considering that, by any stretch of the imagination, it is a better song than ‘The Girls I Never Kissed’, both in terms of content and further impact.
‘Hound Dog’ changed the musical landscape forever, whereas Sinatra’s recording of Leiber and Stoller’s more grown-up effort is scarcely counted among his personal best.
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