The Coasters, a rhythm and blues band formed in 1955, left an indelible mark on the music scene with their unique blend of humor and social commentary. In 1961, they released "Little Egypt (Ying Yang)," a song that became a hit and remains a memorable piece of their repertoire. In 1987, they became the first group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This article delves into the meaning and history of "Little Egypt," exploring its cultural context, musical influences, and enduring legacy.
“Little Egypt” was written by the same songwriting team as many of their other hits. Three years after the Coasters made "Little Egypt" a hit, in 1964, Elvis Presley sang it in the movie Roustabout, followed by singing it again in 1968 as part of the Elvis Comeback Special television show.
Elvis Presley performed "Little Egypt" in his 1964 film Roustabout.
The Coasters: More Than Just a Novelty Act
While some viewed the Coasters as a novelty act, their music often contained subtle criticisms of the injustices in a white-dominated society. As a comedy group, the Coasters were accepted by white audiences still familiar with images of minstrelsy, yet embedded in the absurd narratives of the lyrics were subtle criticisms on the injustice of a white-dominated society. Dylan’s recent comment shows how this opinion of the group endures. Yet to cast off the Coasters’ songs, let alone Leiber and Stoller’s work as a whole, as “novelty songs, not serious” is to ignore the social commentary hidden in much of the group’s material.
Despite charting during an era when novelty songs were popular, the Coasters' material doesn't fit neatly into the category. In contrast, the Coasters charted twenty-four times, a popular longevity that belies their novelty classification. Show business hasn’t ever seen a vocal group quite like the Coasters… There isn’t another group that ranks in the top ten of Cash Box’s annual survey of disc jockeys to determine the “Most Programmed Vocal Group” whose basic appeal rests on humor.
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In 1958, when the Coasters became a national phenomenon and their hit “Yakety Yak” became a teenage anthem, the music business was undergoing a dramatic change as rock ‘n’ roll, and the independent labels releasing it, became a growing force in the industry. African American artists had begun to penetrate the pop charts only a few years before. Despite the variety of genres co-mingling on the charts, the hits of the late ‘50s were consistent in ignoring the social protests over segregation that had already begun in the South and would reach a breaking point in the early ‘60s.
The Influence of Leiber and Stoller
The songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller played a crucial role in shaping the Coasters' unique sound and style. In 1954, when Leiber and Stoller founded their own record label, Spark Records, the Robins were the first group they signed. The groups who worked with Leiber and Stoller were often surprised with the songwriters’ fluency in black vernacular. “Wow, these guys really did know a lot about our culture,” remarked Coasters member Carl Gardner, adding, “They wrote songs as if they were black. I heard Jerry dated black girls.”
Leiber and Stoller discovered their style early on through their shared sense of humor, a unique blend of their Jewish heritage and African American influences. Both communities were often targets of open prejudice and derision from white society, and both coped with this adversity using humor. The Coasters lyrics balance between the ribald and the deadly serious, chuckling about “the joke that the poor tell on themselves,” as Leiber once put it.
When Leiber and Stoller moved from LA to New York to work for Atlantic Records, they brought tenor Carl Gardner and baritone Bobby Nunn of the Robins with them, adding Billy Guy and Leon Hughes to form a new group called the Coasters. The other three stayed back and continued as the Robins, although the old group quickly faded.
The Coasters were known for their energetic performances and comedic style.
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"Little Egypt": The Song and Its Story
"Little Egypt" reached #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961. In Vancouver it peaked at #4. In the song, Little Egypt is depicted as a burlesque dancer/stripper, wearing "nuttin' but a button and a bow." It was the last Top Thirty hit song for The Coasters. In their song they update the timeline of the real Little Egypt, from her heyday in the 1890’s, to a more contemporary 1949.
The Coasters performed in Vancouver at the King of Clubs at 1275 Seymour Street in Vancouver one year in the late Sixties from March 11th to 23rd. It also impressed other singers such as Elvis Presley who eventually also covered the song.
In the song "Little Egypt," the Coasters continue with "She let her hair down and she did the hoochie-koochie real slow." The word burlesque comes from the Italian (and Spanish) word burla meaning joke or mock. And so burlesco turned into burlesque and in theater went on to be a parody of something. In the United States burlesque acts were popular from clubs to theaters and often were striptease acts, even kind of funny.
Here are some lines from the song:
“Poor little maid.
She never saw the streets of Cairo,
On the Midway she had never strayed,
She never saw the kutchy, kutchy,”Read also: A Guide to Little African Licorice Drops Ingredients
“She let her hair down and she did the hoochie-koochie real slow, wo wo
When she did her special number on a zebra skin I thought she'd stop the show, wo wo
Singing, yeah-yeah
Yeah-yeah (a-gitcha-gitcha-gitcha)
Yeah-yeah
Yeah-yeah
She did a triple somersault and when she hit the ground
She winked at the audience and then she turned around”“All the girls in France do the hootchie kootchie dance
And the way they shake, it would kill a rattlesnake."
"Little Egypt" - THE COASTERS "Live"
The Real "Little Egypt"
In 1893 there was a World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World. The “Street in Cairo” included the popular dancer known as Little Egypt who was featured at the Egyptian Theatre’s show “The Algerian Dancers of Morocco.” She introduced America to the suggestive version of the belly dance known as the “hooootchy,” to a tune said to have been improvised by world’s fair promoter, Sol Bloom.
The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, featured the "Street in Cairo" with the original Little Egypt.
Little Egypt’s birth name was Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos. She was born in 1871 and had been performing under the stage name Fatima when she got her start at the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona. By 1893 Little Egypt was 22 years old. (Another dancer who took turns spelling Little Egypt off on stage at the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition “Street in Cairo” show was Fatima Djamile, just to confuse things).
She popularized this form of dancing, which came to be referred to as the Hoochie-Coochie, or sometimes called the Shimmy and Shake. When Mark Twain had attended a show with Little Egypt he nearly had a heart attack from watching her performance. Subsequently, Twain featured Little Egypt in his first silent film movie.
In 1896, Spyropoulos was arrested by New York City police. A raid took place at the famous Sherry’s restaurant where she was caught dancing the hooch-coochee, this time, in the nude, at a stag party given by the grandson of P. T. Barnum.
The Evolution of Dance
At first as controversial as the Little Egypt dances from the Chicago Exposition's Street in Cairo pavilion was, this new style of dance soon was revolutionizing the dance world. Here was modern dance. Here were dances from exotic lands. And it was now OK to experiment, to have poetic freedom and to create new dance styles.
The Coasters' Legacy
The Coasters’ hits made up the majority of tunes in the score for the 1994 musical revue Smokey Joe’s Cafe, a retrospective of Leiber & Stoller songs. In 2007, Carl Gardner’s autobiography Carl Gardner: Yakety Yak I Fought Back-My Life with The Coasters, was published. In 2005 Carl Gardner retired. His son, Carl Jr., replaced him as lead vocalist for The Coasters.
As of 2008, The Coasters line-up was Carl Gardner Jr., Ronnie Bright, Alvin Morse, J.W. Lance and guitarist Thomas Palmer.
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