Get a Job: The Silhouettes' 1958 Hit and Sha Na Na

The Story Behind the Song · The Silhouettes, 1958

A jukebox in a trailer park at Childersburg, Alabama, photographed in 1941 — the machine that made records like this one into hits

A jukebox in a trailer park at Childersburg, Alabama, photographed in 1941 — the machine that made records like this one into hits · Jack Delano, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress

How the Silhouettes made Get a Job

Richard Lewis had spent his Army enlistment writing songs. Home in Philadelphia and out of uniform, he listened to his mother ask him why he didn't go and get a job, and the song more or less wrote itself. He was the tenor in the Silhouettes; the credit on the record went to the group.

They recorded it in October 1957 at Robinson Recording Laboratories in Philadelphia. It came out first on the small Junior label in November, then Al Silver's Ember Records bought the master and reissued it in December as Ember 1029. It became Ember's first million-seller.

The chart facts need naming precisely, because the usual shorthand flattens them. On Billboard's Top 100, in the issue dated March 3, 1958, "Get a Job" was No. 1 in the country. On the R&B Best Sellers in Stores chart, in the issue of February 24, it was also No. 1. But on the pop Best Sellers in Stores chart — a different survey in the same magazine — it got no higher than No. 2, held off by Elvis Presley's "Don't." All three of those statements are true at once, which is why the number alone never tells you much about a 1950s record.

The part of the song that outlived its chart run is the nonsense syllable. Eleven years later a group of Columbia University students formed a band to play old rock and roll and called themselves Sha Na Na, after the refrain. They opened for Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, and "Get a Job" was in their set. Through the 1970s their television show carried the sound of 1958 into living rooms that had no memory of it, and the fifties revival that Happy Days and American Graffiti fed on had a name borrowed from four young men in Philadelphia.

On the record

  • Recorded October 1957 at Robinson Recording Laboratories, Philadelphia; issued on Junior in November 1957 and reissued as Ember 1029 in December.
  • No. 1 on Billboard's Top 100, issue of March 3, 1958 (survey week ending February 22).
  • No. 1 on R&B Best Sellers in Stores, issue of February 24, 1958. Pop Best Sellers peak: No. 2, behind Elvis Presley's "Don't."
  • Written by group member Richard Lewis after his Army discharge; credited on the label to the Silhouettes.
  • The Woodstock museum at Bethel Woods records that the 1969 revival band Sha Na Na took its name from the record's refrain.

🎵 We recreate this sound — 1950s doo-wop and slow-dance ballads, new albums every week on the lovesong1950s channel.

Music on this channel is composed and produced with AI tools; the songs, stories, and artwork are original works created for lovesong1950s.

Sources: Billboard, March 3, 1958 — Top 100 (issue scan) · Billboard, February 24, 1958 — pop and R&B Best Sellers (issue scan) · Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks: The Silhouettes · Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on Sha Na Na. Chart positions are cited to the specific Billboard chart and issue date, because the magazine ran several separate charts in these years and a record could sit at No. 1 on one and No. 8 on another.

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