to show Presley from the waist down. In the third and final appearance on January 6, 1957, Presley performed seven songs, including "Hound Dog". This proved to be Presley's last live performance on American television. Recording For 7 hours from 2:00 pm on July 2, 1956, the day after the Steve Allen Show performance, Presley recorded "Hound Dog" along with "Don't Be Cruel" and "Any Way You Want Me" for RCA Victor at RCA's New York City studio with his regular band of Scotty Moore on lead guitar, Bill Black on bass, D. J. Fontana on drums, and backing vocals from the Jordanaires. Despite its popularity in his live shows, Presley had neither planned nor prepared to record "Hound Dog", but agreed to do so at the insistence of RCA's assigned producer Stephen H. Sholes, who argued that "'Hound Dog' was so identified with Elvis that fans would demand a record of the concert standard." According to Ace Collins: "Elvis may not have wanted to record 'Hound Dog', but he had a definite idea of how he wanted the finished product to sound. Though he usually slowed it down and treated it like a blues number in concert, in the studio Elvis wanted the song to come off as fast and dynamic." While the producing credit was given to Sholes, the studio recordings reveal that Presley produced the songs himself, which is verified by the band members. Gordon Stoker, First Tenor of the Jordanaires, who were chosen to provide backup vocals, recalls: "They had demos on almost everything that Elvis recorded, and we'd take it from the demo. We'd listen to the demo, most of the time, and we'd take it from the demo. We had (Big) Mama Thornton's record on 'Hound Dog', since she had a record on that. After listening to it we actually thought it was awful and couldn't figure out why Elvis wanted to do that." However, what Stoker did not realize was that Presley wanted to record the version he saw in Las Vegas by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys that he had been performing since May. As session pianist Emidio "Shorty Long" Vagnoni left to work on a rehearsal for a stage show, Stoker plays piano on this recording of "Hound Dog". As Stoker was unable to also sing first tenor, "the Jordanaires try to come up with a combined sound as best they