Saturday afternoon tunes: RIP Carl Gardner

This week Carl Gardner, the last surviving founding member of The Coasters, the 50's group whose trademark sound gleefully blurred the line between R&B and novelty record, died at 83.

Many African-American close harmony groups flourished in the US in the 1950s, but few appealed to both black and white audiences as much as the Coasters. Their success owed a lot to the witty lyrics of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller on such songs as Charlie Brown and Yakety Yak, but it was also founded on the characterful vocals of Carl Gardner

Is "characterful" a real word? (Don't talk back!)

If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.

Oh, what the hell. Bandwidth be damned. Here's another Coasters classic:

(Hat-tip to Keith at Strictly the Sixties.)