Alvadean Coker was born in Bakersfield, California in 1938 into a performing musical family. The family had moved to California from Conway, Arkansas, in 1937, the year before Alvadean was born. Her father Alvis (Al) headed the singing Coker Family, which also included her mother, Geraldine, and brother Sandy. Alvadean sang and played the fiddle. A rare early female rocker, she appeared as a regular on the Compton, California Town Hall Party in the mid 1950s, where Tex Ritter presided over the show whose guests included label mates Bob Luman, Jim Reeves, and Smiley Burnette. It was there that impresario and Abbott Records owner Fabor Robison would likely have discovered her and taken her to record in his own Malibu studio or Western Recorders at 6000 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Her best known recording, “We’re Gonna Bop” (Abbott 178), was written by her mother, Geraldine Coker, along with the other side, “Do Dee Oodle Dee Do I’m in Love,” which Robison also recorded with Norma and Linda. Robison had a large stable of writers and artists that he kept busy writing and performing. His weakness was distribution and usually looked for larger labels to take over the artists or recordings he produced. Meantime, Robison’s labels, Abbott, Fabor, and Radio Records, were the source of some of country music’s greatest stars, including Jim Reeves, the Browns, Mitchell Torok as well as the Cuban sensations, the De Castro Sisters, whose “Teach Me Tonight” became a 1950s standard. Alvadean Coker’s previous Abbott releases failed to impress the market: “Funny Little Things” b/w “Pecolo, the Puppy” (Abbott 167) and “I Sold Out My Heart” b/w “Crying Heart” (Abbott 169).
