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The Coasters music biography continued...

consisting of were Carl Gardner, Billy Guy, Bobby Nunn, Leon Hughes and guitarist Adolph Jacobs. In late 1957 the group moved to New York and replaced Nunn and Hughes with Cornelius Gunter and Will "Dub" Jones. The new quartet was from then on stationed in New York, and began working with the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for the Atco label. The Coasters' association with Leiber and Stoller was an immediate success. Their first single, "Down in Mexico", was an R&B hit in 1956, and was followed by the double-sided "Young Blood"/"Searchin,'" which crossed over onto the national charts and became the group's first Top Ten hit. It also topped the R&B charts for 13 weeks, becoming the biggest R&B single of 1957. The classic line-up of Gardner, Guy, Gunter and Jones enjoyed three more giant hits, namely "Yakety Yak" (US R&B and pop number 1 in 1958), "Charlie Brown" (US R&B and pop number 2 in 1959), and "Poison Ivy" (US R&B number 1 and pop Top 10 in 1959). By this time, The Coasters were generally regarded as one of the wittiest exponents of teenage growing pains to emerge from the rock 'n' roll era.



With the British invasion of the mid-60s, The Coasters' popularity began to wane, and their hits increasingly emphasized the comic lyrics to the detriment of the music. The Coasters parted company with Atco in 1966, and renewed their partnership with Leiber and Stoller (who had left the label in 1963) with several sides for the CBS Records subsidiary, Date Records. After a one-off single for Turntable (1969"s "Act Right"), the long-serving Gardner and Guy enjoyed a brief comeback in late 1971, when a reworking of "Love Potion Number Nine" for the King label broke into the Billboard Hot 100. Gardner, Guy, Jones and Gunter were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in January 1987. The Coasters have continued in the subsequent decades as an oldies act, fracturing into several different groups playing the nostalgia circuit and reintroducing the youth of today to their classic sound.