Most readers will be familiar with this staple of raunchy dancing that's part of the repertoire of every band that plays at an American sporting event. What would generations of that soon-to-be-endangered species, "sexy cheerleaders," have done without a bit of bump-and-grind to "Louie, Louie." And Animal House afficianados will recall John Belushi's thoughtful explication of the significance of the lyrics. The website LouieLouie.net -- devoted to the production of a documentary on the history of the song, its composer/lyricist Richard Berry, and many of its performers -- has inventoried more than 1,600 recordings. Wikipedia reports that what is believed to be the world's largest jam session was held in 2003 in Tacoma, Washington, where 754 guitarists played a ten-minute rendition of "Louie, Louie."
For me, however, "Louie, Louie" is simply one of the great urban myths. So where else to look than that cornucopia of cultural artifacts, Urban Legends.
"Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll" is more than an Ian Dury slogan; it also neatly encapsulates the three pastimes of America's youth that adults have expended the most effort in trying to control for the last half-century.
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As rock critic Dave Marsh noted:In a culture that interprets puberty as a tragedy of lost innocence rather than as a triumphal entry into adulthood, the possibility of someone actually giving vent to sexual feeling remains deliciously scandalous. Sex is bad, and somebody singing about it would be really bad.
So it was that the youth of America scored a major coup in 1963 by spreading the rumor that a popular recording of an otherwise innocuous 1956 song about a lovesick sailor's lament to a bartender named Louie was really all about sex. You had to listen carefully, the rumor went, maybe even play the single at 33 RPM instead of 45 RPM, but if you did, you'd find that "Louie Louie" was chock full of smutty lyrics. (Another version claimed the dirty words could only be heard on the single and not on the album, even though both were pressed from the same master.) A more effective means of aggravating the older generation could scarcely have been devised: they could neither reassert control by proving the lyrics dirty and punishing those responsible for them, nor could they demonstrate they had never relinquished control by proving the lyrics clean. Or, as Marsh wrote:. . . in the viperous new generation arising in America's schools, no greater sport could be had or imagined than making all repositories of respectability cringe and groan over the unprovable. Somebody, somewhere, came up with the idea of dirty "Louie Louie" lyrics not only as a way of putting on other kids and panicking authority, but as a way of creating something rock 'n' roll needed: a secret as rich and ridiculous as the sounds themselves.[...]
What happened next was presciently covered by Marsh in his book-length exploration of the "Louie Louie" phenomenon:Back in 1963, everybody who knew anything about rock 'n' roll knew that the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" concealed dirty words that could be unveiled only by playing the 45 rpm single at 33-1/3. This preposterous fable bore no scrutiny even at the time, but kids used to pretend it did, in order to panic parents, teachers, and other authority figures. Eventually those ultimate authoritarians, the FBI got involved, conducting a thirty-month investigation that led to "Louie"'s undying — indeed, unkillable — reputation as a dirty song.
So "Louie Louie" leaped up the chart on the basis of a myth about its lyrics so contagious that it swept cross country quicker than bad weather. Nobody — not you, not me, not the G-men ultimately assigned to the case — knows where the story started. That's part of the proof that it was a myth, because no folk tales ever have a verifiable origin. Instead society creates them through cultural spontaneous combustion.
With so many kids having so much fun, and so many adults in authority positions squirming with discomfort or howling with outrage, the story couldn't simply stop there. No, indeedy, J Edgar Hoover's G-men were put on the case.
Once concerned parents began to report their outrage about this allegedly "obscene" song to the FBI, the Bureau made the mistake of expending all their effort in proving it true rather than investigating the rumor itself. It was as if a frightened mother had written to J. Edgar Hoover concerning a story she'd heard about a maniac with a hook being on the loose, and Hoover responded by sending out field agents to investigate whether or not a criminal with a missing hand had recently escaped from a psychiatric hospital. The FBI didn't try to find out where these dirty lyric sheets were coming from; instead, they spent two and a half years analyzing "Louie Louie" played at a variety of speeds and interrogating nearly everyone connected with the song, including Paul Revere and the Raiders, Richard Berry, the Kingsmen, and even record company executives. One person they never, ever talked to was the one person who indisputably knew what words had been sung on the Kingsmen's recording: singer Jack Ely. (Ely had been fired from the band well before "Louie, Louie" hit it big, a fact the remaining Kingsmen were not anxious to publicize.) After thirty-one months of trying to unravel the mysteries of "Louie Louie," the FBI could conclude only that they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record."
I've always thought "Louie, Louie" was a key to understanding why so many boomers had a bit of an attitude problem when it came to taking "authority" seriously.
If you can't get enough "Louie, Louie" and want more on the FBI investigation, The Smoking Gun has "choice excerpts" from the FBI's files.
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