"Yakety Yak" is a song 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 a week as number one on the Top 100 pop list.[1] This song was one of a string of singles released by the Coasters between 1957 and 1959 that dominated the charts, making them one of the biggest performing acts of the rock and roll era.[2]
| "Yakety Yak" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 A-side label of the U.S. vinyl single | ||||
| Single by the Coasters | ||||
| B-side | "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" | |||
| Released | April 1958 | |||
| Recorded | March 17, 1958 | |||
| Genre | Rock and roll | |||
| Length | 1:52 | |||
| Label | Atco 6116 | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller | |||
| Producer(s) | Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller | |||
| The Coasters singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Music video | ||||
| "Yakety Yak" (2007 Remaster) on YouTube | ||||
In 1999, the original 1958 recording on the ATCO label by the Coasters was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[3]
Song
editThe song is a "playlet," a word Stoller used for the glimpses into teenage life that characterized the songs he and Lieber wrote and produced.[4] The lyrics describe the listing of household chores to a kid, presumably a teenager, the teenager's response ("yakety yak") and the parents' retort ("don't talk back") — an experience very familiar to a middle-class teenager of the day. Leiber has said the Coasters portrayed "a white kid’s view of a black person’s conception of white society."[2] The serio-comic 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 filled in, in the up-tempo doo-wop style. The group was openly "theatrical" in style — they were not pretending to be expressing their own experience.[5]
The threatened punishments in the song's humorous lyrics are as follows:[6]
- "You don't get no spendin' cash", for not taking out the papers and the trash
- "You ain't gonna rock and roll no more", for not scrubbing the kitchen floor
- "You don't go out Friday night", for not cleaning up the bedroom and getting the garbage taken out of the room
And the refrain is:
- "Yakety yak. Don't talk back."[7]
In the last verse, the parents order their son to tell his "hoodlum friend" outside in the car, that he will not be allowed to go out with him at all for a ride.
Personnel
editSource: [8]
- Mike Stoller - piano
- King Curtis - tenor saxophone[9]
- Alan Hanlon - guitar
- Adolph Jacobs - guitar
- Wendell Marshall or Lloyd Trotman - bass
- Joe Marshall - drums
- Chino Pozo - congas
Parodies
edit- Vince Vance & the Valiants, one of various groups parodying Barbara Ann as "Bomb Iran" in 1980, created a similarly-themed 2005 parody titled "Yakety Yak (Bomb Iraq)".[10]
Other uses in popular culture
edit- The tenor saxophone solo by King Curtis inspired the 1963 Boots Randolph song "Yakety Sax".[11]
- The song's name was used for the code name of Ubuntu 16.10, a Linux operating system with its versions all named after animals.[12]
- Paul Bettany performs the song in a pivotal scene as Vision in the WandaVision episode "Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience".[13]
- A video of the song was done in "Toon TV", the twelfth episode of the third season of Tiny Toon Adventures, set in the Bronx in 1958 and featuring Plucky Duck, who has been ordered by his father to take out the trash and do the laundry.[14]
- The Ripley family sings along to the song in the opening scene of the 1988 film The Great Outdoors.[15]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 125.
- ^ a b "The Coasters". Rock Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 2006-10-17. Retrieved 2006-11-08.
- ^ "GRAMMY Hall Of Fame | Hall of Fame Artists | GRAMMY.com". grammy.com.
- ^ Henke, James; DeCurtis, Anthony (1980). The RollingStone: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music ((3rd Ed.) ed.). New York, N.Y.: Random House, Inc. p. 98. ISBN 0-679-73728-6.
- ^ Matos, Michaelangelo (April 13, 2005). "Yakety Yak". Seattle Weekly. Retrieved 2006-11-08.
- ^ Leiber & Stoller interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
- ^ The Coasters: The Complete Singles As & Bs 1954-62, Acrobat Licensing LTD., ADDCCD3180, 2016, UK
- ^ "The Cowboy and the Dandy".
- ^ "The Show Band that Wouldn't Die". Houston Press, June 30, 2005.
- ^ Boots Randolph, Boots Randolph's Yakety Sax! Retrieved February 6, 2015
- ^ "Mark Shuttleworth » Blog Archive » Y is for…". www.markshuttleworth.com. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
- ^ "Paul Bettany on 'WandaVision' Stakes: "It Can't Stay That Way Forever"". The Hollywood Reporter. 14 January 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
- ^ "'Tiny Toon Adventures' Toon TV(1992) soundtrack". IMDb. Retrieved 2024-05-22.
- ^ The Great Outdoors (1988) - Soundtracks - IMDb. Retrieved 2024-07-10 – via www.imdb.com.