Annoying Songs & Covers #5

“Yakety-Yak”

If there ever was a song that one could say was representative of a certain time or era, “Yakety-Yak” most certainly has to be considered. The song was written, produced, and arranged by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for The Coasters and released on Atco Records in 1958, spending seven weeks as #1 on the R&B charts and one week as number one on the Top 100 pop list. Why this particular song would be considered R&B is beyond me, but I do not profess to have an innate understanding of how music is classified, but I will warn you that I feel a “rant” coming on this very topic. You have been warned! The song is referred to as a “playlet,” a word that Stoller used for the glimpse into teenage life that characterized the songs Leiber and Stoller wrote and produced. The lyrics describe the listing of household chores to a kid, presumably a teenager, with the teenager’s response to the list being “yakety-yak,” with the parents responding in kind, “don’t talk back,” which they felt was describing a familiar experience to a middle-class teenager of the day. Leiber has said that The Coasters portrayed “a white kid’s view of a black person’s conception of white society.” He went on to comment that the “serio-economic, street-smart ‘playlets’ etched out by the songwriters were sung by the Coasters with a sly, clowning humor, while the tenor saxophone of King Curtis on this track filled in the up-tempo doo-wop style.” The Coasters were, first and foremost, “theatrical” in style – they were not pretending to be expressing their own experience.

I probably heard the song when it first came out, but the lyrics did not have the intended impact on me at the time, since at eight years old I was five years shy of being a teenager. I tried to think back to what would have happened to me, as a teenager, if I had ever blurted out “yakety-yak” to my parents when they were listing some chores I had to do, but I honestly don’t feel that this phrase would have been part of my lexicon back in the day. When I was eight, I probably thought the song was “cute,” but upon hearing it again when I was older, having been recently wowed by The Beatles, Stones, and others, I am pretty certain that the cute label had been replaced by something less flattering!

The Coasters are an American rhythm and blues/rock and roll vocal group who had a string of hits in the late 1950s. They formed in 1955 when two of The Robins (Carl Gardner and Bobby Nunn), a Los Angeles based rhythm-and-blues group, joined Atlantic Records. They were soon joined by Billy Guy and Leon Hughes to form the original Coasters line-up. The Coasters association with Leiber and Stoller was an immediate success, as they produced a string of good-humored “storytelling” hits that, as someone was quoted as saying, “were some of the most entertaining from the original era of rock and roll.” After the success of “Yakety-Yak, the next single was “Charlie Brown,” which reached number two in the charts, and this was followed by “Along Came Jones,” “Poison Ivy,” and “Little Egypt (Ying-Yang).”

The cover by The Retrobates does not disappoint with its level of cringe worthiness. The two gentlemen who make up this group from Hove, England are part of one of England’s largest entertainment agencies, the Alive Network Entertainment Agency, who book their cadre of musicians for weddings, corporate events, and parties. The Retrobates are billed as a “professional rock ‘n roll duo specializing in “vintage” classics. I could not find their names listed anywhere, but after listening to their cover of this song, it’s probably a good thing that they remain anonymous. The good news, the song is less than two minutes long.

Enjoy!

The Coasters. “Yakety-Yak” 1958.

The Retrobates. “Yakety-Yak” cover 2023.

Los Angeles 2024