They made their national TV debut performing "Mister Softee" and "There But For The Grace of God Go I" on Saturday Night Live in November 1980.

The second release, Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places, was a concept album matched with a New York Public Theater stage production; it received positive reviews, with Darnell recognized as a clever lyricist and astute composer, arranger and producer.

By the second album they were accompanied by the Pond Life horn section Charlie Lagond, Ken Fradley, and Lee Robertson, as well as lead guitarist Mark Mazur.

Their live shows at this time were among the most propulsive and enchanting of the period, with outlandish dancing and cod theatricals garnishing the Latin beats.

Coati Mundi also released his solo LP The Former 12 Year Old Genius before the fourth Kid Creole and the Coconuts album in 1983; Doppelganger was a relative commercial disappointment, despite the single "There's Something Wrong in Paradise" reaching the UK Top 40.

In 1983, Kid Creole formed a new swing big band, Elbow Bones and the Racketeers, and he gained the hit "Night in New York".

The Coconuts also sang background vocals in the songs "Red Light" and "Surrender" on U2's album War, which was released on 28 February 1983 on Island Records.

They also appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1986 and in this period released the albums In Praise of Older Women... and Other Crimes (which included the single "Endicott") and I, Too, Have Seen the Woods, neither of which charted in the US.

In 1987, Kid Creole and the Coconuts made their only appearance on the US Hot 100 charts with "Hey Mambo", a track from Barry Manilow's Swing Street album.

Longtime associate Hernandez left the ensemble before 1990's Private Waters in the Great Divide, an album described by the NME as "a return to form with inspired lyrics and buckets of the type of sexual innuendo that Creole has made his own.

"[7] The band had a UK hit with the single "The Sex of It", a song written by Prince and recorded at Paisley Park Studios with Sheila E and Levi Seacer, Jr.

After the 1992 Kid Creole and the Coconuts album You Shoulda Told Me You Were... failed to achieve significant commercial success, the group splintered.

Darnell still tours with the current Coconuts: Roos van Rossum and Charlotte de Graaf (both from the Netherlands) and Kristina Hanford from Memphis Tennessee.

[17] At the end of 2010, Kid Creole and the Coconuts toured Germany with The Night of the Proms, also starring Boy George and Sir Cliff Richard.