'Louie Louie' Hits 60

On a hot August 1988 night, the Long Beach Harbor rocked as it likely never rocked before. The event was the “Louie Louie” party cruise starring Richard Berry, the man who took a cha cha and turned it into the rock anthem “Louie Louie.”

Every garage band worthy of live performance and a fat recording contract must learn the venerable granddaddy of all garage anthems, “Louie Louie.” Venerable, because in the past month, “Louie Louie” reached 60-years-of-age.

Hundreds of versions of Louie Louie” by the Kinks, the Beach Boys, Barry White, the Fat Boys, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead, the Hells Angels, Black Flag, Toots And The Maytals, Neil Young and legions of rock, kazoo and marching bands and singers were broadcast on a San Jose area radio station as “Maximum Louie Louie” in 1985, the same year of a failed attempt to name “Louie Louie” the Washington state song. Nothing similar has been attempted since.

In fact, the State of Washington had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of “Louie Louie,” which was birthed in the orange groves of nearby Orange County. L.A. vocalist and songwriter Richard Berry was booked as the singer for the Latino band, the Rhythm Rockers at the Harmony Park Ballroom, a one-time packinghouse in the middle of orange groves in Orange.

“After the first gig we did, we developed a rapport with Berry,” said Rhythm Rockers sax player Barry Rillera. “He came in one night, saying ‘I like that tune you guys do and I wrote a song.’”

The song they did was “El Loco Cha Cha” by Cuban band leader Rene Touzet, that began with a distinctive “duh duh duh” riff repeated by piano, bass and drums. “I was honest-to-god Richard Berry when I did ‘Louie Louie,” Berry said later, noting story line influences like “Havana Moon” by Chuck Berry and even “One For My Baby and One More For the Road” as performed by the Rhythm Rockers.

Richard Berry & the Pharoahs’ “Louie Louie” was pressed up at the very plant that employed Berry. “I was pressing records and the radio was playing ‘Louie Louie’ every hour on the hour. The foreman fired me. He said I shouldn’t be working there since I had a hit record. I said, ‘Man, I’m not making any money, yet.’ He put me outside breaking returnables,” overstock records that couldn’t be resold, thus were melted down to repress new records. “I was outside in the cold, breaking up a lot of records. I was glad I was left there in case any ‘Louie Louie’s came back.” Only the flip side, “You Are My Sunshine” charted on April 27, 1957, making the original version exactly sixty years old.

“That song made me a rock and roll artist,” said Berry, who unfortunately sold his rights to “Louie Louie” and three other songs for $750 to finance his wedding in 1959.

The second version of “Louie Louie” was by Seattle-based Rockin’ Robin Roberts and the Sonics in 1961. As that version got Seattle radio play, two other Pacific Northwest bands gave “Louie Louie” a shot, Paul Revere and the Raiders and the band that made the song a notorious best seller, the Kingsmen with Jack Ely on lead vocals in 1963.

The Kingsmen version was so garbled, with mistakes such as Ely coming in early on one verse and one possible expletive muttered, that imaginary fake and lurid lyrics began to appear. Across America, parents of high schoolers were concerned when dirty “Louie Louie” lyrics began circulating.

The governor of Indiana declared “Louie Louie” pornographic and the FBI launched an extensive investigation in 1964 and asked the Indiana Broadcasters Association to ban it. The investigation spanned offices in several states, with technicians listening to the song at different speeds trying to discern any obscene lyrics. None were found and the FBI declared it “unintelligible at any speed.”

The difference between the Kingsmen hit and the original, is that the Berry’s innocuous vocals are easily understood, as proved in the Long Beach Harbor in August 1988, assisted by legendary sax blowers, the late Joe Houston and Big Jay McNeely, who just celebrated his 90th birthday. It was a night to remember on the water, a hot night and a very steamy craft filled with fans of rock, roll, rhythm and blues.

Berry got a very nice payday in the late 80s when a legal team restored some of his ownership to “Louie Louie.” His final performance was at the Southern California Doo Wop Society show at the Petroleum Club in late 1996. Berry passed away at 61 in 1997.

steve@beachcomber.news

To read the FBI investigation of “Louie Louie” – complete with the bad words – go to: https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=2069715-louie-louie