Repeatedly touted as the funniest group in rock and R&B, this ‘accolade’ can often detract from the quality of the group’s vocal and musical arrangements to be found on the Leiber and Stoller masterminded Atlantic sides of the 1950s. The original forerunners of the group were the LA based A Sharp Trio, soon renamed the Four Bluebirds. It was as the Robins however that this group scored a number of hits on the R&B charts between 1949 and 1954.
They teamed up with Leiber and Stoller as early as 1951 (‘That’s What The Good Book Says’), then moved to the duo’s newly formed Spark Records label and scored again with the wonderful ‘Riot In Cell Block #9’, ‘Framed’ and ‘Smokey Joe’s Cafe’.
By this time Carl Gardner had joined the group and he, along with original member Bobby Nunn, decided to move to New York and Atlantic Records with Leiber and Stoller, who had themselves signed a contract with the label as independent producers.
Between 1956 and 1960 there were a number of personnel changes but the quality hardly ever dipped. Hughes was replaced initially by Obie Jessie and then by Cornell Gunter and original Bobby Nunn by Will “Dub” Jones (immortalised as the bass voice on the wonderful ‘Charlie Brown’). Gunter also left in this period, to be replaced by Earl Carroll (Mr. “Speedo” of the Cadillacs!!)
Just some of the great Coasters hits include :- ‘Searchin’ / Young Blood’ (a double A-side on first release), ‘Yakety Yak’, ‘Charlie Brown’, ‘Along Came Jones’, ‘Poison Ivy’, ‘Little Egypt’, the wonderful ‘Shoppin’ For Clothes’ – the list goes on and on. There’s a “Very Best Of The Coasters” available at mid-price that has a reasonably representative 17 tracks and is good value. But can you survive without the terrific ‘The Shadow Knows’, which is omitted from the collection. That particular recording is on the 20 track retrospective import called “The Ultimate Collection”. But then again, on this offering, you don’t get ‘What About Us’ or ‘I’m A Hog For You’. There used to be a solution – the slightly expensive import 2CD Rhino collection “50 Coastin’ Classics: Anthology” which was easily the best compilation on the market but is now, criminally, unavailable. At the time of writing (April 2007) the best compilation available is “Yakety Yak: The Best Of The Coasters” single CD on WEA.
After ‘Little Egypt’ hit in 1961, the Coasters never reached the pop or R&B top forty again and they were actually dropped from the Atco label four years later. They reunited with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller on the Columbia Date subsidiary, recording the excellent ‘D.W. Washburn’, later a hit when covered by the Monkees. Up until the time of writing, various editions of the Coasters have continued to play the oldies circuit and it’s all a little complicated to outline here. Over the years, one edition has been led by the ever present Carl Gardner and is possibly the most bona fide but there have been others fronted by Nunn, Gunter and even the short serving Hughes. Nunn died in 1986, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Gunter was murdered in Los Angeles in 1990 and the great Will Jones died in early 2000 – but Gardner and his version of the group is still going strong (as at November 2001).
The production, writing and vocal arrangements on the Coasters recordings were all superior to just about any other contemporary group recordings. So, if you need to lighten up a tad, want to put a little humour into your R&B musical mix, you could do far worse than put a Coasters Anthology into your CD player. They are a little under the radar when compared to some of their label contemporaries (e.g. The Drifters) but although the Coasters slipped through the cracks of popular music history, their classic R&B singles certainly did not.