The Coasters "The Coasters' Greatest Hits" [1959]

For some reason, people thought it was a good idea to take doo-wop and turn it into one big cartoon -- probably the same people who thought rock 'n roll in its uncut form was going to ruin America's youth. Not that there isn't a pretty good point to be made here, but why was this unserious, watered-down group of clowns considered in any way a viable alternative? Further separating The Coasters' sound from anything naturally derived was the inclusion of wiseass songwriters Lieber and Stoller, who'd earlier scored a hit getting Elvis to (likely unknowingly) sing a song about prison sex. These guys wrote campy, routinely stereotypical (heck, The Coasters could've been called The Stereotypicals, if it weren't for the fact records were still being recorded in mono back then) and lewd ditties with all the depth of Saturday morning TV, as if Chuck Berry were Captain Kangaroo. The music industry, for all its self-congratulatory "progressiveness," was actually quite myopic and cynical even back in the late 50s, when they apparently felt they couldn't sell a singing group like The Coasters without first turning them into a vaudeville act. They also brought in punchy, goofball sax solos that lead one directly and unfortunately to the theme song of "The Benny Hill Show." So yes, in retrospect, it's pretty clear this band and their handlers were trying to defuse rock 'n roll by continually pointing everything in the direction of The Catskills -- an ingeniously evil plan that just may have worked if The Coasters themselves were at all popular.