Pop Chronicles

The Way of the Yak

by Steve Piccolo

The yak is not a particularly loquacious animal. Yet its name has found its way into American slang in an apparently onomatopoeic coinage: to yak (or yack), “to talk informally but persistently.”

The Coasters were a remarkable doo-wop group that had a major string of hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, also thanks to the songwriting and producing duo Leiber and Stoller. Their only nationwide chart topper was “Yakety Yak” (1958), a “playlet” in which the lyrics imitate a nagging mom ordering her teenager to do chores (including the priceless line “bring in the dog and put out the cat”). The legendary saxophonist King Curtis played on the track, in choppy riffs that imitate the speech patterns of an angry parent.

In 1963 saxophonist Homer “Boots” Randolph III recorded the hugely successful instrumental track “Yakety Sax.” The piece is a wild mashup that incorporates scraps of fiddle tunes, circus music and other pop references, transferring the rock’n’roll sax style into a more country-like arrangement. The implied twang was picked up two years later by Chet Atkins, who replaced the sax with finger-picking on his “Yakety Axe” (here the axe is not a woodsman’s tool, but a slang term used by musicians to indicate an instrument, especially a guitar or a saxophone – hence the expression “chopping wood,” a whimsical way of describing practicing).

English slapstick comic Benny Hill used Yakety Sax endlessly in his hilarious speeded up chase skits, and many people now think of the tune as the “Benny Hill song.” When applied as a soundtrack, this music is said to make anything instantly funny: the Yakety Sax Effect. You can try this at home: watch even the most dramatic scene from the saddest movie, replacing the soundtrack with Yakety Sax. The results are tragically amusing.

But scholars may have found a much older etymological connection in the ancient practice of “ejaculatory prayer.” The “jack” sound in “ejaculatory” actually came from a “yak” sound, that of the Latin iaculum, a dart, javelin or other projectile. Short prayers or sporadic exclamations of spiritual transport are a common feature of worship in many religions, across history and around the world, from the spontaneous vocalizations of several types of yoga (kriyas) to the loud, chaotic outbursts of the Shouting Methodists or Baptists. And so, to come full circle, the way of the yak begins and ends with (primarily) Black American music.