In a short period of time, the Cramps changed drummers twice; Miriam Linna (later of Nervous Rex, the Zantees, and the A-Bones) replaced Pam Ballam, and Nick Knox (Nicholas Stephanoff, formerly with the Electric Eels) replaced Linna in September 1977. In the late 1970s, the Cramps performed regularly in New York at places like CBGB's and Max's Kansas City, releasing two indie singles produced by Alex Chilton at Ardent Studios in Memphis in 1977 before being signed by Miles Copeland to the young I.R.S. Records label. In June of 1978 they gave a free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and later released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. They released the two singles again on their 1979 Gravest Hits EP, before Chilton brought them back that year to Memphis to record their first full length album, Songs The Lord Taught Us, at Phillips Recording, operated by former Sun Records label owner Sam Phillips.
After relocating to Los Angeles, Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club joined the Cramps on guitar. But while recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights. The ensuing court case prevented them from releasing anything until 1983, when they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Hudson of The Pagans and Click Mort were the final second guitarists - albeit only live - of the Cramps' pre-bassist era.
In 1985 the Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie "The Return of the Living Dead" called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar. With the release of 1986's A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.. The album featured an increased focus on sexual double entendre, and met with differing fates on either side of the Atlantic: in Europe, it sold over 250,000 copies, while in the U.S. the band had major problems finding a record company prepared to release it.
It was not until 1987 that the Cramps found a suitable permanent bass player: Candy Del Mar, who made her recorded debut on the raw live album ROCKINNREELININAUCKLANDNEWZEALANDXXX, which was followed by the studio album Stay Sick in 1990. The Cramps hit the top 40 singles chart on both sides of the Atlantic for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the song. The Cramps went on to record many more albums and singles through the 1990's and 2000's, for various labels and with varying degrees of success.
