143 Song Review – Louie Louie – Holly & Kelly Music Review

Before we start this review – whoops, Holly got really busy and forgot to schedule posts last week! So enjoy extra reviews this week to catch up! Sorry, friends!

SONG: Louie Louie

ARTIST: The Kingsmen

YEAR: 1963

Listen to it here:

THE SONG:

Louie Louie was written and composed by American musician Richard Berry in 1955, and released in 1957. Berry based the song on the tune “El Loco Cha Cha” which was popularized by Rene Touzet, and for those who have never listened to the lyrics, it tells the song of a Jamaican sailor returning to the island to see his lover.

The song has been recognized worldwide for its influence on the history of rock and roll, and if you look up all its accolades, you’ll find a huge list of major publications that credit it as the beginning of rock.

The song has been described as “the best of songs and the worst of songs,” “cosmically crude,” “musically simple, lyrically simple, and joyously infectious,” “deliciously moronic,” and “immortal.” Others have looked back on it as a song waaaay ahead of its time that served as a bridge from R&B to rock, all the way to the rap scene of the future. It’s been credited with not only being the beginning of rock, but also the beginning of the criticism of rock in general in that “all you need to make a great rock n roll record are the chords to ‘Louie Louie’ and a bad attitude.”

Many many different versions of this song exist, but the one we will be focussing on today is The Kingsmen’s recording. This recording was the subject of an FBI investigation about the supposed, but nonexistent, obscenity of the lyrics. Due to the nearly unintelligible nature of the lyrics, they were widely misinterpreted and for a time the song was banned by radio stations. This only helped to fuel the popularity of one of the most well known songs of all time.

THE ARTIST:

The Kingsmen are an American rock band from Portland, Oregon. The band started with Lynn Easton and Jack Ely who would perform at a young age in local newspaper-sponsored revues. In 1957 they started performing together with Ely singing and playing guitar and Easton on the drum kit. The duo performed at local parties and events and soon added Mike Mitchell on guitar and Bob Nordby on bass to round out the band. They took their name from a recently disbanded group, and the Kingsmen began their collective career playing at fashion shows and supermarket promotions. 5 years later, Don Galucci was recruited on keyboard.

In 1962, while playing a gig in Seaside, Oregon, the band noticed Rockin’ Robin Roberts’ version of Louie Louie being played on the jukebox for hours on end with the whole club dancing. Ely convinced the Kingsmen to learn the song, which they played at dances to a huge response from the crowd. The Kingsmen became the house band at a club called The Chase and the owner of the club, Ken Chase became the group’s manager. He booked them a one-hour recording session at a studio to make a demo tape for cruise ship gigs. The band had just played Louie Louie for 90 straight minutes the night before (can you even imagine???)

Despite the band’s annoyance at having so little time, they recorded 3 tunes, with Louie Louie being the only song with vocals. Ely had to lean back and yell/sing into a mic suspended from the ceiling in order to be heard, and he was also wearing braces, which added to his infamously slurred pronunciation. The band was not proud of the recording and wanted to fix their mistakes (including Ely’s 2 bar early entrance), but Chase liked the energy and rawness and assured them the demo could be redone before a record was released, which, of course never happened.

The Kingsmen attracted nationwide attention when Louie Louie was banned by the governor of Indiana, and went under investigation by the FBI because of alleged indecent lyrics in their version of the song. The lyrics were actually innocent, but ironically the FBI totally missed Lynn Easton yelling “FUCK” after fumbling a drum fill! All this attention just made the band and the version more popular.

The Kingsmen had a LOT of turnover in the band. Easton, whose mother had registered the name of the group and therefore owned it declared that from 1963 on he intended to be the singer, asserting, “it’s my band because I own the name” and forcing Ely to play the drums. This led to Ely and Nordby quitting the group, and being replaced by Gary Abbott and Norm Sundholm. Don Gallucci, another original member, was forced out because he wasn’t old enough to tour, and this version of the group stayed together for two whole years!

The group in different iterations continued to record, tour, and sue people through 2021 when the last remaining member of the original lineup, Mike Mitchell, died.

FACTOID CORNER:

April 11 is billed as International Louie Louie Day.

KELLY’S REVIEW:

When I was a kid, my all-or-nothing brain told me that this song was THE rock n’ roll song. No other song was as rock as Louie Louie and you were a rock star as soon as you could cobble that bass line together on any instrument. Then for a good few years I forgot that it existed, except for in any movie where they want you to believe that things are in fact taking place in the early 1960’s and they shoehorn this song in with that instantly recognizable first grace note. So musically and instrumentally this song is…rough. I had never noticed before just how sloppy a lot of it sounds! But sloppy is not always bad, it has a lot of that White Stripes questionable drumming early 2000s garage sounds, and I’ll bet if you ask Jack White what helped inspire him he would say this song. From what I can tell it’s only drums, verrrrrry quiet bass and organ. It has THE MOST basic of chord structures and arrangement, just looped over and over. The lead singer sounds very rock ‘n roll but I have no idea what he was saying, except for “Louie Louie, me gotta go” (which I actually thought was ‘we gotta go’ until I looked up the lyrics). Now for the lyrics…this is supposed to be Patois/Jamaican? Ahahahahahahahahahaa ok. My inlaws are Jamaican and they…don’t sound like that. Anyhow, this song is simple, sloppy, basic, overplayed and yet, I still tap my toe when I hear it, which at the end of the day, is a mark of excellent pop song writing.

HOLLY’S REVIEW:

This song is so ubiquitous that I remember we had an ALL Louie Louie record growing up. Also, along with Mercy Mercy Mercy, this was one of the first tunes we played in high school jazz band, and beginner band kids across the continent learn that 10 note lick practically as soon as they learn to make a sound. The historical context and impact of this song is pretty impossible to remove from the song itself, so I’m sure both my sister and my mark for this song will reflect that because it almost has to. The song itself is mind numbingly simple. Chord changes? Who needs them! Lyrics that can be heard and understood? Overrated! A polished performance? Booooo. But it is absolutely the simplicity that makes the song so catchy. As far as the playing goes, the drums sound super weird in the mix but I like how all out the drummer is – I think much of the energy comes from him. He also makes the choice to play some sort of fill at LEAST every second bar. I like the sound of the keyboards and guitar together, but the bass also sounds really funky and weird. And the vocals are a thing. Half sung, half yelled, no discernable words or phrases, but some definite energy and pizazz. I think with all of those elements combined, even though the song is not super complicated or ground breaking on its surface, I think people found the lack of polish and the overt energy new and refreshing. I don’t love Louie Louie, but I do love the spirit and energy behind it!

Average mark out of 10:

Holly: 8/10

Kelly: 8/10

Other notable versions of this song:

Richard Berry (the writer of the song) and the Pharaohs: