Buick 59' - The Medallions

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A direct recording! I was told by ilbmlb51 that this record could've been played on the radio station! I'm assuming it was played in the San Francisco area, because that's where it was shipped from! The Medallions were an American doo-wop vocal group led by Vernon Green. The group formed in Los Angeles in 1954, after Vernon Green was heard singing on the street by Walter "Dootsie" Williams, the owner of Dootone Records. Green – who walked with a cane as a result of childhood polio – put together a singing group with three friends from Fremont High School, Andrew Blue, Randolph Bryant, and Ira Foley, and named them the Medallions because of his own penchant for wearing medallions around his neck. Their first release, "Buick 59", based on Todd Rhodes' double-entendre R&B recording "Rocket 69", was one of the first releases on Dootone in September 1954. It was backed with a ballad called "The Letter", which received extensive airplay in the region. "The Letter" contained the nonsense lyric, "the 'puppetutes' of love", which was later picked up by the Steve Miller Band as "the pompatus of love" and used in their song "The Joker". The song also included the nonsense word "pismotality", invented by Green.