ROBERT HILBURN : SONG TEAM SNIFFS OUT A STANDARD

When Elvis Presley’s version of “Hound Dog” caused a sensation in 1956, few pop observers were shrewd enough to see either the young rock singer or the song as anything more than a passing novelty.

Not even Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller--who wrote the song--expected “Hound Dog” to last much beyond the seven weeks Elvis’ record stayed on top of the national sales charts.

So it was especially sweet for Leiber and Stoller on Thursday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel when “Hound Dog” was honored as a “standard” by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers--right alongside more predictable ASCAP favorites like “As Time Goes By,” “Night and Day” and “Tea for Two.”

It’s not that Leiber and Stoller didn’t think two decades ago that Presley was an extraordinary young singer or that “Hound Dog” wasn’t a marvelous expression of blues aggression, but the consensus was that rock ‘n’ roll was just a fad.

Reminiscing before Thursday’s banquet about the pair’s early songwriting days in Los Angeles, Leiber said: “It probably took 10 years before we started to believe the songs would last. For one thing, we thought all the standards had been written and that (rock) songs were like newspapers. . . . People would be interested in them for a while, then throw them away.

“We never dreamed anyone--much less critics--would sit around years later and analyze the songs and marvel over them. It was only when writers told us that we were important that we began to realize there was an influential body of work there.”

Besides such other Elvis hits as “Jailhouse Rock” and “Loving You,” the pair also wrote such ‘50s hits as “Yakety Yak,” “Searchin’ ” and “Riot in Cell Block No. 9.” Their later successes included the Peggy Lee records “I’m a Woman” and “Is That All There Is?”

Coincidentally, “Hound Dog” was written just a few miles from the hotel where the ASCAP dinner was held.

Leiber and Stoller, who started writing together because of a mutual love for the blues, were still teen-agers in 1952 when bandleader Johnny Otis asked them to write some songs for artists in his revue. They attended one of Otis’ rehearsals and were so struck by the power and aggression in the vocals of Big Mama Thornton that they rushed back to Stoller’s house in the Crenshaw district and began working on a song.

Recalled Leiber: “Mike sat at the piano and tried some blues stuff and I walked around the room screaming words until, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog’ came out. I was looking for something real angry because I had in my mind this harsh story about a gal throwing a gigolo out of her house.”

Thornton’s recording went to No. 1 on the R&B; charts in 1953, meaning that blues fan Elvis most certainly heard it. But Leiber doesn’t think Elvis decided to record the song until he heard it again in a Las Vegas lounge.

“You’ve got to remember it was written as a woman’s song, but Freddy Bell--who recorded it before Elvis--changed the words a little so that it was a man’s song,” Leiber said. “My guess is Elvis saw Bell do it in Vegas and realized it could work for him.”

“Hound Dog” was the start of a brief, rich association between Elvis and the songwriting team. “After a while, the scripts (for the movies) were all the same and nobody involved with Elvis wanted to expand,” Stoller explained. “They wanted to stick to a formula and it got boring. The fun was out of it.”

MORE ON ASCAP: The Pop Awards Dinner was initiated last year by ASCAP, which, along with rival Broadcast Music Inc., is one of the nation’s two leading music licensing bodies, to honor its most successful writers and publishers, past and present. Hal David, organization president, said the 16 “standards” are the songs that received substantial radio and/or television exposure for each of the last 10 years.

Besides “Hound Dog,” the standards included “Night and Day,” “Misty,” “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and one of David’s own songs--”Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” written with Burt Bacharach.

Of the writers honored for work during 1984, Lionel Richie scored an amazing sweep. Not only was he honored as the most successful writer, but he was also cited for the year’s most popular composition (“All Night Long”) and for having the most successful publishing company (Brockton Music).

David, whose “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” (co-written by Albert Hammond) was named one of the top-played songs of last year, said the awards are going to be held annually in Los Angeles rather than rotated between here and ASCAP’s home base in New York. “My instinct is to leave it here,” he said. “After all, this is where the major part of the popular music scene is.”

LIVE ACTION: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers will be at the Forum on Aug. 1. Tickets go on sale Monday. . . . Tickets also go on sale Monday for two Greek Theatre shows: Howard Jones on June 1 and Santana on Aug. 2. . . . Tickets go sale Sunday for George Winston’s June 28 and 29 shows at the Universal Amphitheatre and for the George Strait/Reba McIntyre pairing there on June 30. . . . Dan Hartman will be at the Palace on May 25, while ‘Til Tuesday headlines there on May 31. . . . B. B. King and Bobby Blue Bland will be at the Beverly Theatre on June 21 and 22.