the Canon". American Music 16:2 (University of Illinois Press, Summer 1998) pp. 168, 169. By the spring of 1956, Presley was fast becoming a national phenomenon and teenagers came to his concerts in unprecedented numbers, with the enthusiastic reaction – particularly to "Hound Dog" – causing riots at some performances. Presley researcher Guillermo F. Perez-Argüello contends that: Response Larry Birnbaum described Elvis Presley's rendition of "Hound Dog" as "an emblem of the rock 'n' roll revolution". George Plasketes argues that Elvis Presley's version of "Hound Dog" should not be considered a cover "since [most listeners] … were innocent of Willie Mae Thornton's original 1953 release". Michael Coyle asserts that "Hound Dog", like almost all of Presley's "covers were all of material whose brief moment in the limelight was over, without the songs having become standards." While, because of its popularity, Presley's recording "arguably usurped the original", Plasketes concludes: "anyone who's ever heard the Big Mama Thornton original would probably argue otherwise." Presley was aware of and appreciated Big Mama Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog", and had a copy in his personal record collection. Ron Smith, a schoolfriend of Presley's, says he remembers Elvis singing along to a version by Tommy Duncan (lead singer for the classic lineup of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys). According to another schoolmate, Elvis' favorite r'n'b song was "Bear Cat (the Answer to Hound Dog)" by Rufus Thomas, a hero of Presley's. Agreeing with Robert Fink, who claims that "Hound Dog" as performed by Presley was intended as a burlesque, "troping off white overreactions to a black sexual innuendo", Freya Jarman-Ivens asserts that "Presley's version of 'Hound Dog' started its life as a blackface comedy", in the manner of Al Jolson, but more especially "African-American performers with a penchant for 'clowning'Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Jordan. It was Freddie Bell and the Bellboys' performance of the song (with Bell's amended lyrics) that influenced Presley's decision to perform, and later record and release, his own version: "Elvis's version of 'Hound Dog' (1956) came about, not as an attempt to cover Thornton's record, but as an imitation of a parody of her record performed by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys… The words, the tempo, and the arrangement of Elvis' 'Hound Dog' come not from Thornton's version of the song, but from the Bellboys'." According to Rick Coleman, the Bellboys' version "featured [Dave] Bartholomew's three-beat Latin