Yakety Yak

Infobox Single
Name = Yakety Yak


Cover size =
Caption =An album featuring "Yakety Yak"
Artist =The Coasters
B-side ="Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart"
Released = April, 1958
Format = 7"
Recorded = March 17, 1958
Genre = Rock
Length =
Label = Atco Records 6116
Writer = Jerry Leiber Mike Stoller
Producer = Leiber/Stoller
Certification =
Last single = "Gee, Golly"
(1958)
This single = "Yakety Yak"
(1958)
Next single = "The Shadow Knows"
(1958)
Misc =

"Yakety Yak" is 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 a week as number one on the Hot 100 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.cite web
url=http://www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=81
title=The Coasters
publisher=Rock Hall of Fame
accessdate=2006-11-08 ]

ong

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.cite book
first=& James Henke (eds)
last= Anthony DeCurtis
authorlink=
coauthors=
year=1980
title= The RollingStone: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music
edition=(3rd Ed.)
publisher=Random House, Inc.
location=New York, N.Y.
pages= p. 98
id= ISBN 0-679-73728-6] The lyrics describe the listing of household chores to a kid, presumably a teenager, the teenager'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.”

The serio-comic street-smart “playlets” etched out by the songwriters were sung by the Coasters with a sly clowning humor. The screaming saxophone of King Curtis filling in hot, honking bursts in the up tempo doo-wop style. The group was openly theatrical in style -- they were not pretending to be expressing their own experience.cite web
first=Michaelangelo
last=Matos
year=2005
month=April 13
url=http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/0515/050413_music_christgau.php
title=Yakety Yak
publisher=Seattle Weekly
accessdate=2006-11-08 ]

The threatened punishment for not taking out the garbage and sweeping the floor in the song's humorous lyrics:cite book
first= Paul
last= Friedlander
authorlink=
coauthors=
year= 1996
title= Rock and Roll: A social history
edition=
publisher= Westview Press (Harper Collins)
location= Boulder, CO
pages = p. 66
id= ISBN 0-8133-2725-3 ] :"You ain't gonna rock and roll no more,"And the refrain::"Yakety yak, Don't talk back."

Beneath the humor, Leiber and Stoller songs often made incisive points about American culture, largely by lampooning racial stereotypes.

The British novelty duo The Pipkins, whose big hit was "Gimme Dat Ding" in 1970, followed that single with their own vocal version of "Yakety Yak." It was featured on TV's "American Bandstand" but was rated mediocre by the studio audience, and did not reach the Top 40.Fact|date=August 2008

The song was later featured on "Tiny Toon Adventures" as a music video starring Plucky Duck.Fact|date=September 2008

Notes

External links

* [http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/yakety.htm Lyrics to Yakety Yak]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/ The Coasters Website]