Is Our Business (Germany: Bear Family Records BCD 15901). Elvis Presley's version (1956) Elvis Presley and his band first encountered "Hound Dog" at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1956. Presley had been booked from April 23 through May 6, 1956 to appear at the Venus Room of the New Frontier Hotel and Casino as an "extra added attraction", third on the bill to the Freddy Martin Orchestra and comedian Shecky Greene. It was his first appearance in Las Vegas. However, "because of audience dissatisfaction, low attendance, and unsavory behavior by underage fans", the booking was reduced to one week.Don Tyler, Music of the Postwar Era (ABC-CLIO, 2008) p. 223. Freddie Bell and the Bellboys were still the resident act at the Silver Queen Bar in the Sands, and "Hound Dog" remained a staple for them. Presley and his band attended a performance and loved their burlesque reworking of "Hound Dog". According to Paul W. Papa: "From the first time Elvis heard this song he was hooked. He went back over and over again until he learned the chords and lyrics."Barbara N. Land and Myrick Land, A Short History of Las Vegas, 2nd ed. (University of Nevada Press, 2004) p. 137. When asked about "Hound Dog", Presley's guitarist Scotty Moore and his drummer D. J. Fontana agreed that Elvis had borrowed the Bellboys version after seeing them perform the song live. In 1992, Leiber and Stoller confirmed that Presley was familiar with Thornton's record of the song but "he didn’t do her version"; he had learned the song from Freddie Bell & The Bellboys. Presley first added "Hound Dog" to his live performances at the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. Ace Collins indicates that "Far from being the frenetic, hard-driving song that he would eventually record, Elvis' early live renditions of 'Hound Dog' usually moved pretty slowly, with an almost burlesque feel." Presley modelled his performance, particularly his hip gyrations, on the Bellboys version, which was a Las Vegas-style comic burlesque. Just weeks after they had seen Bell and the Bellboys perform, "Hound Dog" became Elvis and Scotty and Bill's closing number for the first time on May 15, 1956, at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, during the Memphis Cotton Festival before an audience of 7,000. The song remained his standard closer until the late 1960s.Robert Fink, "Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of