<Table> <Tr> <Td> "Gee, Golly" (1958) </Td> <Td> "Yakety Yak" (1958) </Td> <Td> "The Shadow Knows" (1958) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> "Gee, Golly" (1958) </Td> <Td> "Yakety Yak" (1958) </Td> <Td> "The Shadow Knows" (1958) </Td> </Tr> <P> "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 #1 on the R&B charts and a week as number one on the Top 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 . </P> <P> 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 . 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 ." The serio - comic street - smart "playlets" etched out by the songwriters were sung by the Coasters with a sly clowning humor, while the screaming saxophone of King Curtis filled 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 . </P>

Who sang yakety yak don't talk back