Who is Louie and Where in the HELL Are We Going?
Prerequisite:
Before reading farther, you will appreciate this work more if you first go to the following link and listen to a song.
Listen only once don’t jump the gun and Google the lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EqzTiDc-1k&list=RDMM3EqzTiDc-1k&start_radio=1
*** understand that in the 1960s, almost always, a “live” TV performance was lip-synced to the actual recording that was played on the radio and released to record stores.
From the age of sixteen, I have always enjoyed going to a bar. I don’t think it is a genetic thing, I just enjoy the atmosphere. Clubs, bars, hole-in-the-wall(s), discos, pubs, piano bars, I’ve been to them all. From that Saturday night 41 years ago when I dared myself to sneak off to Hattiesburg, (a town about 45 miles away) to go to Cash McCool’s back in the “Saturday Night Fever” era, to the point that I built my own bar right here where I’m sitting today. Understand, being from way down here in the “Bible Belt,” I realize that there is a certain somewhat jaundiced perspective that exists about drinking, and dancing establishments from the word go. I acknowledge that certain dangers exist just beyond the thresholds of barrooms across the world and I’m not looking for any proof. Yes, sin resides in a barroom, just like it resides in the passenger seat of my 2011 Ford F-150 almost every time I strike out on the 12 mile stretch of Mississippi State Highway 586 from the Walthall County line to Foxworth, Mississippi. Talk about losing your religion, and the same applies to the same truck and the same pavement when traveling in the opposite direction. Suffice it to say that I enjoy hanging out in bars.
With the setup in place and my normal trip to the past, my anamnesis takes me back to the year 1989 and to a small hotel bar in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Scarcely, I can say that there is no expanse of time within the life of DBeazy when more was going on. Newly divorced, on my own again, a new career, a different town, a 4 – 5-year-old daughter, a dying father, let us just say that my plate was full. Consequently, the barroom was often my place of solace, my escape from the heavy, heavy, heavy load that this 26-year-old carried. It was a time when I almost always had the feeling that I was in over my head, trying to figure it all out, trying to be the best father that I could be, learning the career, and searching for the meaning of it all.
A co-worker’s husband was a bartender at a bar known to me only as “Northgate.” This was a bar that seemed like it catered to an older crowd, and that was fine with me because due to my responsibilities, I was a 26-year-old living the life of a much older man. This co-worker always invited me to join her at the bar, especially when a good act would be performing there and I took advantage of my friend and her husband the bartender, for free or discounted drinks, for the worldly lessons they offered, and for the hookups, to use “modern” terminology.
The bar, once inside, was roomy. There was a long bar to the left, and the stage was on the back wall. The room had had an ample dance floor, and was “L” shaped with more tables and chairs around the corner to the right. The tables and chairs, were, by-the-way, low, and cushioned, built for comfort. There were ceiling fans. I remember this from the times Vince Vance and the Valiants performed there. Vince Vance would spray his hair straight up, maybe 18 inches above his head, and he would stand in a chair with the blades of the ceiling fans hitting his hair. (You had to be there!) I promise, I had no idea when I walked through the door and shook hands with a strange-looking guy, who later showed up on stage. Vince Vance was that kind of guy, and if he handed you a microphone, you weren’t going anywhere until you sang! I took my mom there one night and we were both terrified that Vince was going to hand us the mic. I have happy memories of my mother and me, like the night she and I saw Vince Vance and another night when Jeff Bates sang a Conway Twitty song while dancing with her.
Northgate had an act that never failed to pack the house. My friend would call and say, “Jeff’s in town.” I knew to get there early and plan on staying late. I mean past closing time because Jeff Holland would get a couple of “WOO WOOS” in him and he was ready to party all night. I had no idea what a Woo Woo was at the time, but Jeff seemed to like them.
One night, I met my friends at Northgate and the energy in the place was electric. I was sitting at my table and introduced myself to the young lady at the table to my right. Jeff kicked off a song that he covered really well, “Louie Louie,” by the Kingsmen, and he led from this song right into an old McCoys song, “Hang on Sloopy.” This was a crowd favorite and it was certainly my favorite of their covers. A slow song followed and I took it as my chance to ask the girl at the next table to dance and she accepted. We moved around the floor, making small talk, full names were exchanged, the “Do you come here often?” and “Where are you from?” interrogatives and such. Somehow, I had developed the strong opinion that engaging conversation was imperative during the first dance or two, with lots of eye contact, and lots of direct and open-ended questions. I asked what she thought of the “Louie, Louie,” and “Hang on Sloopy” covers and she said that they were her favorite songs that Jeff sang. She then followed with a statement that I had not previously known, and frankly, had not crossed my mind since that night until just the other day. The girl and I never saw each other again after that night. Call it fate, I guess, but now, 31 or so years later, something triggered the facts that she shared with me that night. I don’t know what dredged up that old conversation, I mean, I guess I could have heard “Louie, Louie,” but I don’t recall it if I did. But I remember that she told me that the Kingsmen and their version of the song “Louie Louie” was investigated by the Attorney General of the United States, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI back in the 1960s.
I almost immediately began researching the song and was led to a wealth of information regarding this little known piece of rock and roll trivia. Maybe this is something that EVERYBODY knows, but it was kind of a shock, and yes, a little fate that the old memory crept up through the spider webs in my brain. By way of bibliography, I read several articles, from publications like “The New Yorker,” “NPR (National Public Radio) Online,” “Wikipedia,” of course, and the entire 119 pages of a heavily redacted Freedom of Information act released FBI Document entitled, “Louie, Louie (The 60’s Song).”
Bibliography notwithstanding, I think I’ll just tell the story, well, in story form. So here we go. The story could begin at any point from 1955 to very recent, but I’ll begin with what I feel to be the most important part which was April 1963. It happened something like this.
There was a band consisting of 5 guys in their early twenties who spent $36.00 to record an audition tape for a job on a cruise ship. The group failed to get the job, but from there, one of the most iconic, most listened to, most covered, and most misunderstood songs in the history of music was given life. As one might imagine, for $36.00 one gets what they pay for. The story goes that in order for the radio DJ turned “producer” for this record was trying to achieve a certain sound and felt the vocals were entirely too loud on the first “cut.” On the second, and final cut, the producer raised a single microphone high above the group, and the band was basically bunched together and singing to a microphone up above them. The result? Well, the resulting recording is what made a band called “The Kingsmen” famous. The song that made it as high as #2 on the charts with lyrics that NOBODY could interpret. There are other varying accounts as to the exact details of how the Kingsmen ended up with the finished recording, and I suppose there is some truth to all of the accounts. Suffice it to say my account is a literal “montage” of different stories. All that matters is that for the sake of discussion, the song was released and became popular.
Now if Social Media had been around in 1963, the story of Louie Louie would have gone viral faster than the Jason Collier story did here in 2021. The Kingsmen took some rather jejune lyrics, applied a simple three-chord riff, and that was it. From there, a mainly teenage listening audience purchased the record began to try to interpret the lyrics the old fashioned way, by playing the song over and over and collectively, comparing notes. The results were, well, somewhat disturbing, but realistically predictable, at least now, given what we have learned since the 1960s about the adolescent mind and the reaching of puberty. But parents of the early 1960s weren’t yet as desensitized as we are today. Upon trying to determine the lyrics of the song and fueled by the hormone-induced interpretations of their children, naturally, they became incensed. Incensed to the point that attempts were made to censor the song. Eventually, a request was made to Robert Kennedy who was United States Attorney General, to open an investigation into the lyrics.
For two years, a copy of the song, along with one of the “interpretations” of the song, (no one knew who transcribed it) and the actual lyrics as produced by the record label, were examined and re-examined. The song seemed to take on a life of its own, as it was investigated by, The Federal Communications Commission, The United States Post Office, and the Office of the Governor of the state of Indiana, The Indiana Broadcasters Association, and The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Louie Louie was played backward, forward, and at slower speeds. It passed from laboratory to laboratory and back. There are memorandums in the FBI report that had a list of as many as 16 names, with lines beside them for each to place a checkmark, indicating I guess that each person had read it. Keep in mind, that all of this was going on by “OUR” government, attempts to limit freedom of speech in an era when human rights was THE HOT TICKET! Also, if you feel like it was only recently that our government took up the practice of wasting taxpayer money on an investigation based in essence on a salacious rumor, you would be wrong. Add to the ridiculousness of it all, this was going on at a time when we had another little investigation going on that might could have benefitted from having “all hands on deck,” as it were. That investigation is the assignation of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Oh well, it is what it is, I guess. Given that at the time, the mimeograph had yet not been supplanted by modern copiers, making much of the FBI report difficult to read. To this, I admit that I may have inadvertently missed it, but I don’t think anyone participating in the investigation ever thought to interview Jack Ely, the singer of the song, nor did they question Richard Berry, the writer of the song. Somehow, I would have thought that these would have been the first two stops.
As if this isn’t enough music trivia for one song, there is an entirely different storyline here. The song Louie Louie was written in 1957 by Richard Berry. The song, according to some accounts, came about when Berry was hanging out in a bar after performing in Anaheim, California. He had heard the beat of a song called El Loco Cha Cha Cha and was inspired to write Louie Louie on a brown paper bag. Though some accounts say that he wrote it on toilet tissue, I find the brown paper bag thing a little more plausible. The song inspired by the popular Calypso beat of the time was written by Berry as a story of a sailor telling a bartender named Louie about a girl he longed for back in the islands where he was from. Some accounts tell the story that Berry wrote the song after eavesdropping on a conversation between a sailor and a bartender. At any rate, Berry recorded it with a band called the Pharoahs and had limited success. The story goes that Berry sold the rights to the song for $750 to buy his fiancé a wedding ring, and by the 1980s was living with his mother and on welfare. A beverage company wanted to use the song in its marketing campaign and contacted Berry for permission to use it. It was here that an attorney explained that Berry could get the rights back to the song and consequently, a settlement was reached and Berry died a wealthy man.
Thank you for indulging me in this bit of music trivia, all compliments of a memory of a night in a bar in Hattiesburg, Mississippi circa 1990. I hope you found this as interesting as I did.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot this, with all of the information overloads. After 2 years, the investigation was closed, citing that while obscene language could possibly exist within the song, it could not be proved. About the recording though, it was released with 2 gaffes. At the 1:57 mark of the song, lead singer Jack Ely missed his mark after a guitar solo and came it too early with the next verse. The other faux pas occurred earlier in the song at the 55-second mark. Oddly enough, it is at this point that drummer Lynn Easton dropped one of his drumsticks and clearly uttered an F-bomb, though, through 2 years of investigation, no one ever caught it. Go figure.