The Coasters were formed 69 years ago this month, when two members of an L.A.-based R&B group called The Robins came east to join Atlantic Records. The new group was dubbed The Coasters because they crossed the continent to come together.
About the same time, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller produced “Smokey Joe's Cafe" for The Robins (their sixth for the group). Atlantic liked the tune so much, the company offered Leiber and Stoller an independent production contract to bring The Robins to Atlantic.
However, when only two Robins — Carl Gardner and Bobby Nunn — wanted to make the move to New York, the new Coasters were born; the group’s association with Leiber and Stoller was a match made in rock ‘n’ roll heaven.
The Family Flood grew up singing, laughing and dancing to The Coasters’ string of good-humored storytelling hits. Theirs were some of the most joyful radio moments of the 1950s and early ‘60s, starting with “Down in Mexico,” “Young Blood” and “Searchin’,” quickly followed by “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” “Poison Ivy,” “Little Egypt.”
About This Song
As reported earlier, the song featured in this video that Pamela Bowen shot at a recent rehearsal dropped into The Coaster’s world in 1957, and various incarnations of The Flood have played it for the past four decades. (For more on that part of the story, click here.)
For this latest rendition, the guys were joined by Floodster Emeritus Paul Martin who dropped by to sit in for the evening.
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