Vernon Green was leader of the rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 band The Medallions

The Medallions

The Medallions were a rhythm and blues band led by Vernon Green . They were the first doo-wop group to record for Dootone Records. Their first release, "Buick 59," was backed with a ballad called"The Letter." "The Letter" contained the nonsense lyric, "the 'puppetutes' of love," which was later...

. He wrote the 1954 song "The Letter" which contained the nonsense lyric, "the puppetutes of love," which was later picked up by Steve Miller as "the Pompatus

Pompatus

The word pompatus is a neologism used in the lyrics of Steve Miller's 1973 rock song "The Joker":-Lyrics:...

 of love." According to an interview with Green, puppetutes was "A term I coined to mean a secret paper-doll fantasy figure [thus puppet], who would be my everything and bear my children."

Green died on December 24, 2000, in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, from complications of a stroke he suffered earlier that year.