Songfacts®:

• Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington wrote this as the theme song for the CBS TV show Rawhide, which ran from 1959 to 1966. The show launched the career of Clint Eastwood, who starred with Eric Fleming as a cowboy on a cattle drive. Since the show had a Western theme, the composer Tiomkin and lyricist Washington were asked to write the music, as they had written songs for some famous Western movies, including High Noon and Wild Is The Wind.
• The song simulates the sounds of a cattle drive, as the cattleman is calling out instructions and cracking his whip. Rawhide is animal hide that has not been treated and made into leather - it's commonly used to make whips.
• This song popularized the phrase "hell bent for leather," which Judas Priest used as the title for their 1978 album and its title track.
• The Blues Brothers renewed popularity in the song when they performed it in their 1980 movie. It's used in a memorable scene where the band is playing to a hostile crowd from a stage protected by chicken wire. When they play their repertoire of soul music, they're greeted with a flurry of beer bottles. To win over the crowd, they play "Rawhide," which does the trick.
  
  The Blues Brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi) were backed by members of Booker T & the MG's, the Memphis band that played on classics by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and many other seminal soul artists. This scene was inspired by stories the group's guitarist, Steve Cropper, told Aykroyd. In a Songfacts interview with Cropper, he explained: "I told Danny about the chicken wire and all that - that was to protect the instruments. It had nothing to do with the film with the throwing of beer bottles. It made sense in the movie, but the reality was because musicians weren't able to afford drums, pianos, microphones, and all that, when a fight broke out, they'd get tore up. So, some of the owners put chicken wire over the stages for when a fight broke out. I played one of those clubs one time."
• Frankie Laine had another whip-cracking hit in 1949 with "Mule Train." He also sang the title song to the 1952 Western High Noon.
• In addition to The Blues Brothers, "Rawhide" has been used in many other movies, often to evoke the Old West. Among them:
  
  Happy Feet Two (2011)
  Shrek 2 (2004)
  The Year of Maria (2000)
  My Favorite Martian (1999)
  Bye Bye Love (1995)
  This Boy's Life (1993)
  An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
  City Slickers (1991)
  The Lemon Sisters (1989)
  Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
  
  It also appears in episodes of The Simpsons ("Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore" - 2004) and Miami Vice ("The Cows of October" - 1988).