merit topped the country & western and rhythm & blues charts and peaked at number one on Billboard's main pop chart, the Top 100. Later reissues of the single by RCA in the 1960s designated the pair as double-A-sided. By August 18, 1956, Peacock Records had re-released Big Mama Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog", backing it with "Rock-a-Bye Baby" (Peacock 5–1612), but it failed to chart. Stoller learned of the Presley cover from Leiber after returning from vacation in Europe. He expressed some disappointment in the success of the cover: "It just sounded terribly nervous, too fast, too white. But you know, after it sold seven or eight million records it started to sound better." Leiber and Stoller tired of explaining that Presley had dropped most of their lyrics. For example, Leiber complained about Presley adding the line, "You ain't never caught a rabbit, and you ain't no friend of mine", calling it "inane…It doesn't mean anything to me." Forty years later, Leiber told music journalist Rikky Rooksby that Presley had stamped the hit with his own identity: "(A) white singer from Memphis who's a hell of a singer—he does have some black attitudes—takes the song over… But here's the thing: we didn't make it. His version is like a combination of country and skiffle. It's not black. He sounds like Hank Snow. In most cases where we are attributed with rock and roll, it's misleading, because what we did is usually the original record—which is R&B—and some other producer (and a lot of them are great) covered our original record." In September 1956, Democratic congressman Emanuel Celler expressed disgusted at "the bad taste that is exemplified by Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' music, with his animal gyrations". In October 1956 Melody Maker critic Steve Race reacted negatively to Presley's rendition of "Hound Dog", saying that "for sheer repulsiveness coupled with the monotony of incoherence, Hound Dog hit a new low in my experience." Race later stated: "it is a thoroughly bad record", lacking in "tone, intelligibility, musicianship, taste [and] subtlety", and defying "the decent limits of guitar amplification". In 1957 Frank Sinatra supported US Senator George Smathers' crusade against "inferior music", including "Hound Dog", which Sinatra sarcastically referred to as "a masterpiece." Oscar Hammerstein II had "a particular loathing of 'Hound Dog'". In 1960, Perry Como told The Saturday Evening Post: "When I hear 'Hound Dog' I have to