Released September 1960 Genre Pop | Format Vinyl, 7", 45 rpm Length 2:57 | |
B-side "The Snake and the Book Worm" Recorded July 29, 1960
Atlantic Studios, New York City | ||
"Shoppin' for Clothes" is a novelty R&B song in the talking blues style, recorded by American vocal group the Coasters in 1960. Originally credited to Elmo Glick, a songwriting pseudonym of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who also produced the track, it was partly based on the 1956 song "Clothes Line (Wrap It Up)", written by Kent Harris and recorded by him as Boogaloo and his Gallant Crew. Harris later received a co-writing credit on "Shoppin' for Clothes."
Contents
Background and recording
Jerry Leiber conceived the idea for the recording when Billy Guy of the Coasters told him about a song he had heard on the radio, about a man shopping for clothes. Guy had remembered some of the lyrics, but not the song title or singer. Leiber failed to track down the original recording, and created some new lyrics on the same theme, incorporating the lines that Guy had remembered.
Both songs had the same introductory lines:
I was shoppin’ for a suit the other day
And walked into the department store
Stepped on the elevator and told the girl
“Dry goods floor”
When I got off, a salesman come up to me
He said, “Now, what can I do for you”
I said, “Well, go in there and show me all them sport clothes
Like you s’pposed to.."
The song continues with the singer being shown various high-class suits, eventually selecting one but then being told, "I’m sorry my man, but your credit didn’t go through”, and finally lamenting "That’s a suit you’ll never own."
Stoller wrote and arranged the music, at a slower tempo than Harris' earlier song, and the group recorded the track on July 29, 1960, at Atlantic Studios in New York City. In reciting the dialogue, Guy took the part of the shopper and bass singer Will "Dub" Jones was the salesman. Other musicians were group members Carl Gardner and Cornell Gunter, with Stoller (piano), King Curtis (tenor sax), Sonny Forriest and Phil Spector (guitars), Wendell Marshall (bass), and Gary Chester (drums).
Writer Matt Powell said that "Guy’s... vocal performance as the hapless customer is a subtle, nuanced, self-deprecating hipster tour de force", and "King Curtis’ sly, playful, warm and flirty sax lines accentuate Stoller’s minimalist, stuttering groove bed". Phil Hardy called the track "the coolest—and blackest—sounding of [the Coasters'] Atlantic recordings."
Release and legacy
Released by Atco Records in September 1960, the record reached no higher than number 83 on the Billboard Hot 100. Some copies of the record were titled "Clothes Line", with a writing credit given to Harris. After Harris' publishing company, American Music, alleged copyright infringement, an out-of-court settlement gave Harris a share of the writing credit with Leiber and Stoller.
In live performances, the Coasters would place a clothes rack on stage, and dramatize the song. Other musicians who later recorded the song include the Steve Gibbons Band, the Flying Pickets, and Darts.