Originally credited to Elmo Glick, a songwriting pseudonym of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who also produced the track, it was partly based on the 1956 song "Clothes Line (Wrap It Up)", written by Kent Harris and recorded by him as Boogaloo and his Gallant Crew.

Jerry Leiber conceived the idea for the recording when Billy Guy of the Coasters told him about a song he had heard on the radio, about a man shopping for clothes.

Stoller wrote and arranged the music, at a slower tempo than Harris' earlier song, and the group recorded the track on July 29, 1960, at Atlantic Studios in New York City.

Other musicians were group members Carl Gardner and Cornell Gunter, with Stoller (piano), King Curtis (tenor sax), Sonny Forriest and Phil Spector (guitars), Wendell Marshall (bass), and Gary Chester (drums).

Writer Matt Powell said that "Guy’s ... vocal performance as the hapless customer is a subtle, nuanced, self-deprecating hipster tour de force", and "King Curtis’ sly, playful, warm and flirty sax lines accentuate Stoller's minimalist, stuttering groove bed".