Carl Gardner, a founder and lead singer of the rock-and-roll vocal group the Coasters, whose hits such as as "Yakety Yak," "Charlie Brown," "Poison Ivy" and "Young Blood" reflected and lampooned the lives of American teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s, died June 12 at a hospice in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
He was 83 and had congestive heart failure and complications from an earlier stroke.
Mr. Gardner, a tenor, first recorded as a member of the Los Angeles doo-wop quintet the Robins. Their 1955 hit recording of Jerry Leiber’s and Mike Stoller’s “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” led to a contract with Atlantic Records in New York.
When the other three Robins didn’t want to move east, Mr. Gardner and bass singer Bobby Nunn formed a quartet, the Coasters — the name a reference to their West Coast roots.
The Coasters continued to record songs by Leiber and Stoller, including the Latin-tinged “Down in Mexico” and “Yakety Yak.” The latter, released in 1958, parodied parental demands:
Take out the papers and the trash
Or you don’t get no spendin’ cash
If you don’t scrub that kitchen floor
You ain’t gonna rock and roll no more
Yakety yak (don’t talk back)
" Charlie Brown " —"fee fee fi fi, fo fo fum, I smell smoke in the auditorium" — immortalized the class clown.
The Coasters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. “Beneath the humor,” the citation said, “the songs often made incisive points about American culture for those willing to dig a little deeper.”
Leiber has said "Poison Ivy" ("you can look, but you better not touch") was a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases. " Along Came Jones " satirized the violence and inanity of television, and "What About Us" contrasted the worlds of the haves and the have-nots.
The humor carried over from the records to the Coasters' stage show.
“A rehearsal with the Coasters was more like a party than work,” recalled Stoller in “Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography.” “When the guys came in off the road, they performed the choreography that they had created for the last batch of songs, and Jerry and I would be on the floor.
“Then we played them the new songs we had written for them, with Jerry acting out the stories. They’d be rolling on the floor.”
Carl Edward Gardner was born April 29, 1928, in Tyler, Tex. His father worked as a bellhop and sold bootleg liquor on the side.
While in high school, Mr. Gardner sang on a local radio station. After a stint in the Army and nightclub work in Texas, he left for Los Angeles at 24, hoping to become a pop crooner in the style of Billy Eckstine and Nat “King” Cole.
Mr. Gardner was performing at a nightclub when he was asked to replace incarcerated tenor Grady Chapman in the Robins. Although he’d hoped to work as a soloist, Mr. Gardner signed on, thinking the job would be temporary. Instead, he spent his entire career performing in groups.
Mr. Gardner preferred ballads to the Coasters' more famous novelty songs. Among his favorite records was the Coasters LP "One by One" (1960), a collection of standards including Mr. Gardner's leads on "Moonlight in Vermont" and "Satin Doll."
His first marriage, to Ladessa Richardson, ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 24 years, Veta Ryfkogel of Port St. Lucie; two children from his first marriage, Carl Gardner Jr. and Brenda Gardner, both of Dallas; a son from a previous relationship, Ahilee Gardner of Pennsylvania; three stepsons; a brother; and a sister.
The Coasters’ late 1950s lineup of Mr. Gardner, Billy Guy, Cornell Gunter and William “Dub” Jones reunited for the group’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and for the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1988. Mr. Gardner was honored with a pioneer award by the Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 1994.
In 2007, Mr. Gardner retired from performing and turned over leadership duties of the Coasters to Carl Jr.
"I've tangled with the mob, broken the color barrier in Las Vegas, cursed out racist audiences who had come to hear 'race music' and at times carried a gun on stage," Mr. Gardner wrote in his autobiography, "Yakety Yak I Fought Back: My Life With the Coasters."
“I never dreamed that so many problems and danger came with being a star,” he added. “And so little money, even though I’ve sold millions of records.”
