Yakety Yak

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"Yakety Yak" was a song written, produced, and arranged by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for The Coasters and released on Atlantic Records in 1958, spending seven weeks as number one on List of number one rhythm and blues hits and the Hot 100 number one pop list. This song was one of a string of singles released by The Coasters between 1957 and 1959 that dominated the charts, one of the biggest performing acts of the rock and roll era.^[1]

1 Song
2 Trivia
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Song

The song is a "playlet", a word Stoller used for the glimpses into teenage life that characterized the songs Lieber and Stoller wrote and produced.^[2] The lyrics describe the listing of household chores to a kid, presumably a teenager, the teenage's response (yakety yak) and the parent's retort (don't talk back), an experience very familiar to a white teenager of the day. Leiber has said the Coasters’ portrayed “a white kid’s view of a black person’s conception of white society.”^[1]

The serio-comic street-smart “playlets” etched out by the songwriters were sung by the Coasters with sly clowning humor. The yakety saxophone of King Curtis filling in hot, honking bursts in the uptempo doo-woop style. The group was openly theatrical in style -- they were not pretending to be expressing their own experience.^[3]

The threaten punishment for not taking out the garbage and sweeping the floor in the song's humorous lyrics:^[4]

You ain't gonna rock and roll no more,

And the refrain:

Yakety yak, Don't talk back.

Beneath the humor the songs often made incisive points about American culture, largely by lampooning racial stereotypes.^[3]

[edit] Trivia

An answer record was released by Gloria Gunter in 1959 called "Move On Out." This record was released on Arch Records. The recording is available on a CD entitled "Rock 'n' Roll Mamas" (Popcorn #6004) from 2006. Gloria is the sister of Cornell Gunter who sang on The Coasters' original version of "Yakety Yak."^[5]

This song should not be confused with the somewhat similar Yakety Sax, the music often used to comedic effect by Benny Hill.

Tiny Toon Adventures once featured a music video of the song, featuring Plucky Duck as the kid forced to do the chores [1].

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b The Coasters. Rock Hall of Fame. Retrieved on November 8, 2006.
^ Anthony DeCurtis, & James Henke (eds) (1980). The RollingStone: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music, (3rd Ed.), New York, N.Y.: Random House, Inc., p. 98. ISBN 0-679-73728-6.
^ ^a ^b Matos, Michaelangelo (April 13, 2005). Yakety Yak. Seattle Weekly. Retrieved on November 8, 2006.
^ Friedlander, Paul (1996). Rock and Roll: A social history. Boulder, CO: Westview Press (Harper Collins), p. 66. ISBN 0-8133-2725-3.
^ CD liner notes from "Shirley Gunter: Oop Shoop: The Flair and Modern Recordings 1953-1957" (Ace #CDCHD 1082, 2005)