"Rubber Biscuit" started life as Charles Johnson's answer to the marching rhythms of the Warwick School for Delinquent Teenagers while he was an intern there.
The scat is interrupted every few bars for short one-liners, most of which are implicit references to the singer's poverty and meager diet resulting from such items as a "wish sandwich" (where one has two slices of bread and wishes for meat in between them), a "ricochet biscuit" (which is supposed to bounce off the wall and into one's mouth, and when it does not, "you go hungry"), a "cool-water sandwich," and a "Sunday go-to-meeting bun."
The Chips were teenage friends in New York: Charles Johnson (lead vocal), Nathaniel Epps (baritone), Paul Fulton (bass), Sammy Strain and Shedrick Lincoln (tenors).
Although it did not chart, "Rubber Biscuit" became popular on the East Coast, allowing the Chips to tour alongside the Dells, the Cadillacs, and Bo Diddley, but the momentum gained by their debut single was waning and the group broke up at the end of 1957.
Sammy Strain went on to success in the music industry, as a member of Little Anthony & the Imperials from about 1961 to 1972, when he left to join the O'Jays.