Review: The Coasters - Greatest Hits (1959)

Tracks: 1) Poison Ivy; 2) Along Came Jones; 3) Down In Mexico; 4) The Shadow Knows; 5) I’m A Hog For You; 6) Charlie Brown; 7) Yakety Yak; 8) Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart; 9) That Is Rock & Roll; 10) Young Blood; 11) Sweet Georgia Brown; 12) Searchin’.

REVIEW

As much as I try to stay away from mentioning Greatest Hits-like album in my chronological account of the early era of LPs, completely bypassing them out of principle would make no sense — for one thing, many albums released by Atlantic, Sun Records, Columbia, Decca and other major or important labels of the era were actually «greatest hit» records in all but name; for another, LPs that included material recorded specially for the LP itself were a common thing on the jazz market, and maybe even on the «adult pop» market of Frank Sinatra and Doris Day, but certainly not on the «teen pop» market of rock’n’roll and R&B. And if there was an artist at the tail end of the Fifties who could be labeled as a more quintessential teen pop artist than the Coasters... I’m sure I don’t even want to know.

In any case, instead of directly discussing this Greatest Hits package, rather clumsily put together by Atlantic — it does repeat three songs from The Coasters because they were indeed hits, but it also adds a few tracks that were B-sides or non-hit A-sides — we shall simply use it as a base reference point to make a quick overview of the group’s career from late 1957 to the end of 1959, the period which, most would probably agree, was the true Golden Age of the Coasters. If you are well-versed in rock music from the 1960s, you shall quickly recognize at least half of these songs — ‘Poison Ivy’ (the Stones, the Paramounts, God knows who else), ‘Zing! Went The Strings...’ (The Move), ‘I’m A Hog For You’ (‘The Kinks)... no UK band ever dared do ‘Yakety Yak’, though, and for good reason. But let’s step back and get on track.

Reshuffling these songs and putting them in rough chronological order, the first single after the smash success of ‘Searchin’ is actually a strange misfire — not only is ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ not a Leiber-Stoller composition at all (so what was it doing as an A-side?), but, for some reason, they slowed it down to a miserable, barely moving crawl. It does give you a nice opportunity to study all the micro-modulations of the lead singers’ voices, as Billy Guy and Carl Gardner trade lead lines in a technically solid «comic-soul» performance, but the end result is neither funny nor soulful, just boring vaudeville. The B-side was actually a Leiber-Stoller song: ‘What Is The Secret Of Your Success?’ is the first of several «socially biting» tunes that the young iconoclastic songwriters would write for the Coasters, but this is not the best of them, either — too slow and repetitive, and the punchline is honestly weak: "some cats got it and some cats ain’t" is neither a particularly funny nor a particularly smart answer to the title question, even when it is delivered in a goofy bass tone.

The situation did not exactly improve with their next single, which apparently flopped so badly that it was not even included on this album: ‘Dance!’ is Leiber and Stoller’s misguided attempt to give the Coasters their own «dance anthem», which does not really work, regardless of whether you try to take it seriously or treat it like a parody of all the ‘hey baby there’s a brand new dance now’ motivators out there. Actually, that is the problem: the song itself never seems to know just how serious or how ironic it is, and by trying to appeal to both camps at once, ultimately fails. The B-side, ‘Gee Golly!’, is a bit more honestly funny, but feels too much like a pale shadow of the wolf-whistling in ‘Young Blood’ to earn its own proper plate of respect. And that’s a whole two singles in a row failing to do the group justice... one might begin wondering if R&B’s patented smart-pant clowns and their «Jewish-humor» crown songwriter duo had lost their way forever.

And then... and then... and then along came ‘Yakety Yak’, and the world was never the same after that. What can one say about ‘Yakety Yak’, really? It has long since become one of those fixtures of pop culture which, even if you are unfamiliar with the source itself, still invisibly manifests itself every now and then, from the ubiquitous ‘Yakety Sax’ that was directly inspired by the song to just about anything that uses ridiculously fast tempos for comical purposes. The song almost singlehandedly invented a new musical language — or, at least, a new musical dialect — and while I am not sure of this, I think that it pretty much opened the doors for King Curtis, who, until then, was a relatively unknown jazz session player. Of course, he plays a «joke sax» on the track, nothing particularly serious; but there is something absolutely ecstatic and delirious about that insanely fast, comically syncopated style of playing — and at the same time, something in-yer-face defiant and arrogant, totally in line with the song’s cheerfully rebellious spirit.

On a side note, ‘Yakety Yak’ would become the first in a series of decidedly white, «suburban-middle class» musical stories that would specifically be written by Leiber and Stoller to be sung by a bunch of black R&B dudes from the Atlantic label. That entire "you just put on your coat and hat / and walk yourself to the laundromat / and when you finish doing that / bring in the dog and put out the cat" vibe would, on the average, be so much more applicable to the neighborhoods in which Leiber and Stoller grew in, rather than Guy and Gardner, that it can hardly be doubted — the young whippersnappers were consciously trying to market their performing clients to America as a whole, rather than just the black R&B market, and in that they completely succeeded: ‘Yakety Yak’ hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts as well as the R&B charts, a rare case of total racial union in 1959 if there ever was one. Simply put, everybody loved it. Heck, maybe even the parents loved it. I mean, if some parents are totally cool in the 2020s with the «OK boomer» stuff, why wouldn’t they be in 1959? ‘Yakety-yak!’ is the closest thing to a 1959 «OK boomer» you could ever get.

The funny thing is, the B-side of the single sounded as if, in a redemption kind of move, it was designed especially for the proto-boomer parents: ‘Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart’ is an oldie from the 1930s, previously associated with the likes of Judy Garland, done in grand comical style by Will Jones (the bass voice of the band) — with that delivery, there is no question of taking the song too seriously, and its attachment to the ultra-popular ‘Yakety Yak’ is probably responsible for the tune becoming a pop staple, to be remembered, cherished, and revived later by everybody from The Move to The Trammps and beyond. If ever you thought that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band or Frank Zappa or any other artist from the post-Beatlemania era were the first ones to invert doo-wop... well, basically, whatever funny things you discover about popular music in general, I suppose The Coasters were always there first.

With the ‘Yakety Yak’ craze gripping hold of the nation, it was practically inevitable that the Leiber-Stoller team would have to go back there again and again... first, though, they honestly tried doing something completely different, saddling the Coasters with ‘The Shadow Knows’, their not-too-funny homage to the classic radio show. The main problem? Too slow. Nobody wanted a Chicago-style slow blues from these guys, even if the deep laughter and the echoey chorus give it a slightly voodooistic, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins-like angle. Actually, especially if they give it that angle: having become the personal heroes of every rebellious teenager with a yakety-yak attitude, what were they even doing, trying to rope them in once more with references to a show that was far more relevant to their parents than themselves?..

So the mistake was quickly corrected, as Leiber and Stoller dutifully provided the true sequel to ‘Yakety Yak’ — ‘Charlie Brown’ featured the same ridiculously insane tempos, the same style of «bumbling» yakety sax from King Curtis, the same playful interaction between the band’s vocals, and the same appeal to middle-class white audiences, but this time, chose a slightly different setting — the classroom as a field of operations for the proverbial school hooligan. Although just a tad less biting than ‘Yakety Yak’ (which is why it only went to #2 on both types of charts), it’s still a perfect early example of how it is possible for a talented songwriter-performer combination to stay strictly within a given formula, yet twist its possibilities just enough to make things not the least bit boring. Melodically, the only significant difference is that the song has a «luring» slow part ("who walks in the classroom, cool and slow?.."), which makes the transition to ultra-fast chorus even more heartwarming — yet even though the protagonists of ‘Yakety Yak’ and ‘Charlie Brown’ are probably the same, this new episode in the life of our hero never sounds like a retread of past glories, more like a colorful expansion pack. And the punchline — "why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?" — is only a pinch less memorable than "yakety-yak, don’t talk back", but actually delivered with a whole lot more expression. If you ever wondered how it might be possible to sound lazy, mischievous, and deeply socially offended at the same time, take a lesson from ‘Charlie Brown’.

Amusingly, it is the B-side of the single (not included on the album) that may be more familiar to people today, since ‘Three Cool Cats’ was one of the songs included by the Beatles in their Decca audition tape and now commonly available as part of Anthology I. It is not one of the Coasters’ greatest vocal highlights, but it’s a pretty fun tune all the same, meaning that the Beatles could actually do it justice — in fact, this short story of failed communication between ‘three cool cats’ and ‘three cool chicks’ must have been perfectly synchronized between Los Angeles, Liverpool, and/or Hamburg, and I’m pretty sure John, Paul, and George must have had relatable experiences every now and then. We do not exactly get to know how "three cool chicks made three fools of these three cool cats", but (a) we can guess and (b) does it even matter? The important thing is, it’s a nice piece of catchy simplistic satire on adolescent group interaction, and it’s fun to see the slight differences between the Coasters, who take the song at a slightly more leisurely pace, playing it cool and relaxed, and the Beatles, who speed it up and have the guitars and drums in a much more nervous and agitated mood.

By now, the Coasters were on a genuine roll, so it’s no wonder lightning struck thrice — although, yet again, Leiber and Stoller introduced a subtle variation to the yakety-yak formula: ‘Along Came Jones’ returned us back home from school, but this time we were directed to the TV screen, with probably the first direct mock-up of a generic TV show in pop music history. It’s still frickin’ funny even today, even after we have long since abandoned flogging the dead horse of cheesy tropes and clichés in old-school popular entertainment (replacing them with, for now, slightly less detectable, but no less annoying, cheesy tropes and clichés in new-school popular entertainment). It’s just so marvelously constructed, in a far more complex way than ‘Yakety Yak’ — there’s the «ticking clock» percussion referring to both the alarm clock timing of the show and (probably) to «Salty Sam»’s timed dynamite explosions; the group talk simulation ("and then?.. and then?.."); the hilarious little «ahem» cough before the chorus; and, of course, the fabulous omission — we’re never told about how exactly "long, lean, lanky Jones" is supposed to pull poor Sweet Sue out of her latest predicament, because it honestly does not matter. I also have a personal fondness for the lines "commercial came on / so I got up to get myself a snack", which might possibly be the first ever direct putdown of the advertisement industry in the context of a pop song — I mean, everybody watching TV or listening to the radio probably did that in the Fifties and even earlier, but to mention that expressly in a commercial recording?..

The B-side here was more serious, and sounds today like a natural predecessor to AC/DC’s ‘Let There Be Rock’: "In the beginning, there weren’t nothing but rocks... then somebody invented the wheel — and things just started to roll!" There’s a slight shade of ecstatic gospel to ‘That Is Rock & Roll’, and although Leiber and Stoller and their performing clients were certainly not the first to go «meta» and sing hallelujah to this new style of music (everybody from Bill Haley to Chuck Berry had already done it by 1959), their anthem turned out to be one of the most poetic and soulful ("did you ever hear a tenor sax swingin’ like a rusty axe?" is a great line, really, and then along came long, lean, lanky tenor sax and it does swing a little bit like a rusty axe).

That said, by the end of 1959 Leiber and Stoller obviously got tired of the formula, and possibly the Coasters themselves might have become afraid of being labeled as a pure novelty act with a vaudeville show. So the next single, although not featuring any «half-serious» songs of the ‘That Is Rock & Roll Variety’, was more of a «sing-songy» single than a «character impersonation» single — which is the reason why you so rarely encounter covers of ‘Charlie Brown’ or ‘Along Came Jones’ (neither the Beatles nor the Stones could ever do their theatrical nature proper justice), yet ‘Poison Ivy’ turned out to be one of the most frequently covered American songs in the history of UK Sixties’ pop. Indeed, the song is Pop Incarnate: no sax or other instrumental breaks at all, catchiest verse and chorus structure in the world, smooth vocal harmonies, and a bit of a Latin rhythmic vibe underneath it all. And the lyrics — which, for some of us, could look like a shallow, superficial metaphor of a conniving gold-digging killer lady getting her hooks into a naïve male victim, but in reality turns out to be a deep, meaningful allegory of the dangers of catching a venereal disease from the local hooker. "You’re gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion" is pure T. S. Eliot, anyway.

The B-side of the song totally ignored the warning of the A-side, though, proclaiming that ‘I’m A Hog For You’, baby, and that "this little piggie’s comin’ over your house" — now that Charlie "Yakety-Yak" Brown is all grown up, he’s gonna put those nursery rhymes to slightly more adult use. Not a great pop-rocker, certainly not as melodically inventive as ‘Poison Ivy’, but there is one thing about it that’s pure gold: the amazingly daring one-note guitar solo that takes up the entire instrumental break and feels like the most rock’n’roll thing ever, for 1959 at least. (Said to be contributed by Mickey Baker, one of the most creative guitar wizards of the early rock era, although he is usually more known for having been part of the  Mickey & Sylvia duo with their ‘Love Is Strange’ hit). Although both Canned Heat and Dr. Feelgood, who’d cover the song later, would have their lead guitarists jam over the same chord as well, neither of the two dared to repeat this minimalistic exercise in exactly the same way — incidentally, this honor would go to none other than John Fogerty, who would totally borrow the one-note solo for his own ‘Tombstone Shadow’ a decade later; of course, I always thought this was his original discovery until Mickey Baker pointed me towards the light).

Unfortunately, ‘Poison Ivy’ would complete the Coasters’ glorious run of hits — as good as Leiber and Stoller were, their creative pool was not inexhaustible, and their brand of oddness would eventually begin to clash with their commercial sensibility. This is fully evident on the Coasters’ last single of 1959 (not included on the album as it probably came out already after the LP): ‘Run Red Run’ is an ultra-fast, energetic pop-rocker which, however, quickly gets bogged down in its lengthy, bizarre tale of a gambler and his gunslingin’ monkey — I guess the inspiration might have come from Chuck Berry’s ‘Jo Jo Gun’, with its equally convoluted, absurdist tale of a monkey adventure, but both songs share the same problem: they are neither as funny or as dazzlingly surrealist as they seem to want to be, and they both take too much time spinning their yarn instead of entertaining. ‘Along Came Jones’ solved that issue brilliantly by cutting out the «unnecessary» parts of the story, but ‘Run Red Run’ just can’t stop from yappin’, and, for Chrissake, this is certainly not on the level of ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’ or anything like that; it’s just Leiber and Stoller getting a bit too big for their britches.

Much more interesting and daring is actually the B-side — although I do wonder if a song like ‘What About Us’, with its almost Communist message, could have in any way harmed the public image or business perspectives of the Coasters upon release. Musically, it’s not too great, but the emphasis is clearly on the lyrics, with their well-described social contrast: "He goes to eat at the Ritz / Big steaks, that’s the breaks / We eat hominy grits / From a bag, what a drag". This was the first time Leiber and Stoller had actually provided the Coasters with such a directly biting social message, and even though they are careful enough to sing it in their usual «clownish» fashion, still alternating between tenor and bass lines for comical effect, it is clear that "beneath this mask they are wearing a frown" and everything. The chorus is cautious enough — "don’t wanna cause no fuss, but what about us?" — as if Leiber and Stoller included that first line as a safeguard against any potential appearances before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but even so, I can hardly think of any other song from the entire Atlantic catalog in the 1950s that would describe the plight of the underprivileged so transparently, and it is hardly a coincidence that the honor went to the label’s house band of Funny Clowns, as they were now being promoted to the cultural status of King Lear’s Fool. Unfortunately, the record-buying public around Christmastime could not be bothered either by the long-winded storytelling of ‘Run Red Run’ or by the cautiously revolutionary social message of ‘What About Us’, and while the single was not a total flop, neither of the songs ever entered the public conscience to the level of ‘Yakety Yak’ or ‘Poison Ivy’.

Still, all in all, 1959 was quite a fascinating year for the Coasters, and this amazing run of singles, give or take a few, arguably represents the single best combination of novelty humor, satirical intelligence, and driving R&B sound in the history of popular music. For a brief while, armed with the best couple of popular songwriters in the business and their own shade of interpretative genius, the Coasters were like the Marx Brothers of the pop industry — light years ahead of any competition. For reasons beyond their control, this comedic bliss could not make a solid transition into the Sixties, but we do still have the records, and as far as I’m concerned, none of them have aged a bit half a century later.

• Only Solitaire Reviews: The Coasters