Carl Gardner born 29 April 1928

Carl Gardner (April 29, 1928 – June 12, 2011) was an American singer, best known as the foremost member and founder of The Coasters. Known for the 1958 song "Yakety Yak", which spent a week as number one on the Hot 100 pop list, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. 

Born Carl Edward Gardner in Tyler, Texas, he was exposed to a wide range of music including gospel, big bands and opera. His sister, Carol, eventually became an opera singer in New York. After high school, Gardner worked in a department store by day and sang and played drums with a local dance band by night. "We played all over Texas, mostly for the real elite," he remembered. 

In the early 50s, he decided to further his career in Los Angeles. He hung around the clubs and asked every band if he could get up and sing with them. By then, big bands in the style of Count Basie were being replaced by smaller R&B groups, and the first offer of a job came from the Robins, a doo-wop group that had already made some recordings. The group's lead singer had recently been sent to jail, and Gardner was able to fill the vacancy in 1954. 

Soon he was recording Leiber and Stoller compositions with the Robins. These included some slow ballads, but the first hit to feature Gardner was Smokey Joe's Cafe. The songwriters were fascinated with the Mexican-American culture of Los Angeles and the song combined Latin rhythms with a quirky narrative. Smokey Joe's Cafe was issued on the songwriters' own Spark label, but it attracted the attention of a much bigger company, Atlantic Records in New York. Nesuhi Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic, arranged for the Spark catalogue to be purchased and reissued on Atlantic. Smokey Joe's Cafe went on to sell 250,000 copies. The plan was for Leiber, Stoller and the Robins to move to the east coast. However, three of the Robins wanted to stay in Los Angeles, so Gardner and the bass singer, Bobby Nunn, recruited new singers (Billy Guy and Leon Hughes), and their manager, Lester Sill, called this new group the Coasters. 

Their first record, Down in Mexico, released in 1956, reprised the Latin theme in its tale of a young American's misadventures south of the border, and it was another big hit with black audiences. But some of the later songs that Leiber and Stoller presented to the Coasters were targeted at white teenagers as well. The lyrics for One Kiss Led to Another made a reference to "soda pop", and Searchin', the Coasters' first pop hit, listed a series of fictional detectives. 

                                    

Searchin' went to No 3 in the US in 1957 and was followed by a number of American hits for the Coasters. They also achieved success in the UK with the singles Charlie Brown, which portrayed a high-school clown who "called the English teacher daddy-o"; Yakety Yak, the plaint of a teenager who is told to "take out the papers and the trash", "scrub that kitchen floor" and ignore his "hoodlum friend outside"; and Poison Ivy, a 1959 track that was later recorded by the Rolling Stones. 

Several other Coasters songs were favourites with British artists. Screaming Lord Sutch attempted to emulate Gardner on his version of I'm a Hog for You Baby and the Hollies reworked Ain't That Just Like Me. The group's hits gradually dried up in the 1960s and there were several changes of personnel. Eventually, several individuals, including Gardner, led their own versions of the Coasters, playing often at rock'n'roll revival events. In 1987, the Coasters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The following year, Gardner and Guy performed at a New York concert to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Atlantic Records. 

In 1993, shortly after moving with wife Veta to Port St. Lucie, Florida, Gardner sought treatment for a nosebleed. He was ultimately diagnosed by an ENT specialist with a cancerous tumor of the nasopharynx "the size of a grapefruit", and was told chances of survival were slim. Nevertheless, after enduring weeks of radiation therapy, the cancer went into remission, never to recur. Despite some change in the sonority of his voice, Gardner continued to perform with the Coasters as lead singer until he reired in 2005. Carl Gardner, Sr. died on June 12, 2011, at a Port St. Lucie hospice care facility in Florida, after suffering with congestive heart failure and vascular dementia. He was 83. 

Carl, Jr., took over as lead singer, but was fired by Veta Gardner. Together, Carl Jr. and Thomas (Curly) Palmer vowed to keep the legacy alive by "The Coasters featuring Carl Gardner Jr. And Thomas Curly Palmer The legacy continuous". Carl Jr and Thomas Palmer both recorded with The Coasters before Carl Sr's death. Veta Gardner, Carl's widow, owns the rights to the Coasters name and manages a performing group, which has no original members. 

(Edited from Dave Laing obit @ the Guardian & Wikipedia)