This song is for Song Lyric Sunday for Jim Adams’s blog. This week’s prompt…Bird/Cat/Dog/Fish/Pet…I hope everyone has a good Sunday and turns up Hot Dog!
I know some Zeppelin fans that don’t like this song. I guess it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. I love playing that intro on guitar. The intro sounds like a square dance riff from hell. Robert Plant does a great rockabilly vocal and they have the echo set perfectly.
This one is a fun song that Zeppelin sounds like they had a good time recording. Led Zeppelin played this live at the 1979 appearance at Knebworth and 1980 tour in Europe.
The song was on the album In Through The Out Door and it peaked at #1 in the Billboard Album Charts, Canada, The UK, and New Zealand. The song was the B side to Fool In The Rain. The song was written by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
A promotional video was shot. This was the closest Led Zeppelin came to a music video.
From Songfacts
This was influenced by American rockabilly music, which Robert Plant enjoyed. A hot dog is distinctly American cuisine.
Led Zeppelin had some heavy songs, but this was a fun, rollicking tune at a tough time for the band. Plant’s 5-year-old son, Karac, died in 1977 and they were all worn out from constant touring and recording.
The lyrics about a girl in Texas who “Took my heart” may have been based on a real woman in Plant’s life, but he called this a tribute to Texas and the state of mind of the people in Texas.
On a particularly cold day at a turn of the 20th century New York baseball game, no one was buying concessionaire Harry Stevens’ ice cream, so he begun selling sausages and rolls. He started calling out, “Red hot dachshund sausages!” and found they were very popular. Thomas “Tad” Dorgan, a sports cartoonist for The New York Journal, was in the press box and seeing this he attempted to draw a cartoon of a barking sausage steaming in its stretched out roll. He didn’t know how to spell “Dachshund,” so he wrote “hot dog” instead, a name which immediately caught on. (from the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce)
Hot Dog
(Oh, hot dog)
Well, I just got into town today
To find my girl who’s gone away
She took the Greyhound at the general store
I searched myself I searched the town
When I finally did sit down
I find myself no wiser than before
She said we couldn’t do no wrong
No other love could be so strong
She locked up my heart in her bottom drawer
Now she took my heart she took my keys
From in my old blue dungarees
And I’ll never go to Texas anymore
Now my baby’s gone I don’t know what to do
She took my love and walked right out the door
And if I ever find that girl I know one thing for sure
I’m gonna give her something like she never had before
I took her love at seventeen
A little late these days it seems
But they said heaven is well worth waiting for
I took her word I took it all
Beneath the sign that said “you-haul”
She left angels hangin’ round for more
Now my baby’s gone I don’t know what to do
She took my love and walked right out the door
And if I ever find that girl I know one thing for sure
I’m gonna give her something like she never had before
I thought I had it all sewn up
Our love, a plot, a pick-up truck
But folks said she was after something more
I never did quite understand
All that talk about rockin’ bands
But they just rolled my doll right out the door
Oh yeah, they just rolled my doll right out the door
But they just rolled my doll right out the door
With John Paul Jones on piano they had no bass player.
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Yes they played it live…JPJ played the bass on keyboards. Here they are doing it live
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I don’t mind this one. Quirky can be good. But I like most everything they have done.
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Quirky is a really good word for it.
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I need to track this album down on vinyl at some point.
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Very unusual Led Zep song, but I like it. I also enjoyed reading about the dachshund sausages that ended up becoming hot dogs.
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It never sounded like Led Zep to me, but I like it nonetheless… a good example of their versatility.
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It was them having fun…which was not a common event…The Who yes…not Zeppelin as much.
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Yes! What a great intro ☺️ Good one!
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Thanks for reading!
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I almost forgot that one!
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It always brings a smile to my face. That intro is a lot of fun to learn.
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Fun tune! The crazy thing is I’ve listened to “In Through the Out Door” – in fact, I even own that album on vinyl. For some reason, “Hot Dog” didn’t stick, so thanks for the reminder! 🙂
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I like it….it’s a fun song from them that they don’t take too seriously and its really loose. Love Robert’s voice on this.
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Totally. I’m not sure I get why some fans hate it.
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Probably for the reasons I listed…some want everything to be hard. That album is not well liked…I liked it.
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I dig it. I mean, sure, some songs sound different. One of them is “All of My Love.” I think that synthesizer sound is totally cool. “In the Evening” is a fantastic opener. I also like “Fool in the Rain.” And, not to forget, “Hot Dog”! 🙂
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It pointed the way to the 80s! I love In the Evening
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I love it! But then again, it is Led Zeppelin! 🙂
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All these bands have the country bone.
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