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"Charlie Brown"
Single by The Coasters
B-side	"Three Cool Cats"
Released	January 1959
Recorded	December 11, 1958
Genre	Rock/R&B
Label	Atco 6132
The Coasters singles chronology
"The Shadow Knows" (1958) "Charlie Brown" (1959) "Along Came Jones" (1959)

"Charlie Brown" is a popular Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller song that was a top-ten hit for The Coasters in the spring of 1959 (released in January b/w "Three Cool Cats", Atco 6132). It went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts, and was the first of three top-ten hits that year. It is best known for the phrase "Why's everybody always pickin' on me?"

There is no connection between this song and the character Charlie Brown from the comic strip Peanuts, though the PBS special Good Ol' Charles Schulz seems to suggest a connection.

The song has been covered as a ska-punk version by Voodoo Glow Skulls, on their album Firme.

[edit] Lyrics

The lyric "Who calls the English teacher 'Daddy-o'?" is most likely a reference to the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle, in which high school students mock the surname of a new teacher, Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford), changing "Dadier" to "Daddy-o", a then-current slang term (usually genial) for a male friend or a father.

[edit] In Pop Culture

The song was used in the end credits of the ultra-violent 1980's short film Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown, though in the film it is miscredited to the Platters rather than the Coasters.

In the Robin Williams movie Jack, Jack and his friends, including his teacher (played by Bill Cosby), sing this song in their tree house. The weight in the tree house is so great with the kids and the two adult-sized people that the tree house starts to creak. While they are singing the song, a butterfly lands on the tree house and the house collapses. Once they are on the ground, Jack uses the tag line of the song and says, "Why is everybody always fallin' on me?"

The Disney Channel featured the song as a DTV music video set to clips from the Goofy cartoon short Teachers Are People.

[edit] References

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