From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Wed Jun 19, 2002  7:32 pm  - UPDATED 6 JANUARY 2004
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Billy Guy

BILLY GUY (From the Coasters website)

Born 20 June 1936, Itasca, Texas
Died 5 November 2002, Las Vegas, NV

Baritone vocalist of the Coasters, October 1955 - 1972 (occ. absent from 1963)

Born in Texas, Billy Guy moved to Hollywood, started acting as a child and
worked in Johnny Otis´ new club "The Oasis" in the mid ´50s.
He became very popular in the south of California and recorded with Mexican
Emmanuel Perez as Bip & Bop (Guy was Bip) for Aladdin in 1955 ("Ding Dong
Ding"). He became an original Coaster by a suggestion from Carl Gardner, who
lived across the street in Watts. Guy became the great comedian of the
Coasters (and posed with a guitar on early Coasters publicity shots). He was
a genius of musical adventures and of exploring new vocal hights (as Leiber
& Stoller put it: "He could do anything we wanted him to do").

Guy stayed with the Coasters up to 1972 on recordings and acted lead on most
of the Coasters´ later recordings - starting with "Searchin´" and later a.o
"The Shadow Knows", "Wake Me, Shake Me" (which he also wrote), "Wait A
Minute", "Little Egypt", and the notorious "Let´s Go Get Stoned" - although
he started his first attempt as a solo artist back in 1963 (recording for
Lloyd Price´s Double-L, a.o. "Women", later issued as "The Prophet" on
several fake Coasters albums), substituted from the mid ´60s on stage, first
by soul singer Vernon Harrell, and later by Jimmy Norman (Lou Rawls, by the
way, once substituted for Carl Gardner on a tour). Guy continued his solo
career for ABC-Paramount, Chalco, Verve, Sew City and other companies
(and a.o. recorded "Hug one another" in the ´70s and did a single as "Billy
Guy & The Coasters"). He also worked as producer for All Platinum and as
a night-club story teller (as "The Tramp" on recordings - his most notorious
album was "The Tramp Is Funky"). In 1977 he recorded with Will "Dub" Jones
in Nashville and soon moved back to Los Angeles, where he worked as back-up
studio singer with Grady Chapman (for Michelle Phillips in 1977) and with
Billy Richards during the ´80s. He teamed up again with Will Jones in the
West-Coast stationed group of "World Famous Coasters" from the late ´70s
up into the early ´90s. Billy, who nowadays lives in Las Vegas, has turned bald
these days, but still is in good spirits (despite bad business advises - and
is more or less retired these days, although he during the late ´90s acted
as coach and cameo act with a young fake Coasters´ Las Vegas group - often
billed as "The Billy Guy Coasters"). During mid-1999 Guy sued Carl Gardner
for $ 1,000,000 trying to get Carl to give up the "trade-mark" of The Coasters
(without success).

Coasters website: http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/