Yakety Yak

This article is about the song. For other uses, see Yakety Yak (disambiguation).

"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
"Gee, Golly" (1958) "Yakety Yak" (1958) "The Shadow Knows" (1958)
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

The song is a "playlet," a word Stoller used for the glimpses into teenage life that characterized the songs Leiber and Stoller 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 punishment for not taking out the garbage and sweeping the floor is, in the song's humorous lyrics:^[6]

"You ain't gonna rock and roll no more,"

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

Source: ^[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

• 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

• 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 Tiny Toon Adventures (season 3, episode 12), featuring Plucky Duck.^[14]
• The Ripley family sings along to the song in the opening scene of the 1988 film The Great Outdoors.^[15]

See also

• List of number-one R&B singles of 1958 (U.S.)
• List of number-one singles of 1958 (U.S.)

References

1. Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 125.
2. "The Coasters". Rock Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 2006-10-17. Retrieved 2006-11-08.
3. "GRAMMY Hall Of Fame | Hall of Fame Artists | GRAMMY.com". grammy.com.
4. 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.
5. Matos, Michaelangelo (April 13, 2005). "Yakety Yak". Seattle Weekly. Retrieved 2006-11-08.
6. Friedlander, Paul (1996). Rock and Roll: A social history. Boulder, CO: Westview Press (Harper Collins). p. 66. ISBN 0-8133-2725-3.
7. Leiber & Stoller interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
8. The Coasters: The Complete Singles As & Bs 1954-62, Acrobat Licensing LTD., ADDCCD3180, 2016, UK
9. "The Cowboy and the Dandy".
10. "The Show Band that Wouldn't Die". Houston Press, June 30, 2005.
11. Boots Randolph, Boots Randolph's Yakety Sax! Retrieved February 6, 2015
12. "Mark Shuttleworth » Blog Archive » Y is for…". www.markshuttleworth.com. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
13. "Paul Bettany on 'WandaVision' Stakes: "It Can't Stay That Way Forever"". The Hollywood Reporter. 14 January 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
14. "'Tiny Toon Adventures' Toon TV(1992) soundtrack". IMDb. Retrieved 2024-05-22.
15. The Great Outdoors (1988) - Soundtracks - IMDb. Retrieved 2024-07-10 – via www.imdb.com.