I’m thoroughly enjoying the History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast but my latest listen, episode 106 about “Louie, Louie”, was a far crazier story than I’d anticipated. Most of us know of the controversy over the lyrics but the broader story includes:
How the composer sold away most of his royalty rights for $750 in 1959 to pay for his wedding, then got back 50% of future royalties in the 1980s
How The Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders had competing versions on the charts after they both recorded the song days apart in the same studio
How The Kingmen’s version became popular after being featured in a DJ’s “Worst Song of the Week” slot
The lengths the FBI went to during their 2 year investigation into whether the lyrics were actually obscene to avoid violating obscenities laws themselves
That there are at least 2,000 recordings of the song and some radio stations have done all-Louie weekends playing different versions of the song, never repeating one
Highly recommended for lovers of music history or anyone who’s ever danced to “Louie, Louie”.
Thank you, me too, will listen to this and then probably more episodes…
I think it was the first song together with “Wild thing” I wondered about how it works when one artist steals from another.
That’s a major part of the craziness of the song’s history. Few people had heard the original composer’s recording or knew the lyrics as written. The vocal performance in the The Kingsmen’s version borders on unintelligible, for reasons explained in the podcast. As a result there were rumors and public controversy that they were obscene, and lots of investigation in response. Lots of details in the linked Wikipedia piece.
Teenagers at the time spent a great deal of effort trying to decode the lyrics. You should have seen some of the supposed versions that were circulating. Quite obscene. I remember some of them, and wouldn’t post them on here.
