'Louie Louie': Why was the classic rock song investigated by the FBI?

18 July 2024, 11:03

Did you know the FBI spent 31 MONTHS investigating the lyrics to 'Louie, Louie'?

'Louie, Louie' is one of the all-time great rock 'n' roll songs.

It took a while for its legend to grow, but by the middle of the 1960s, it was recognised as the absolute classic it is.

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It's been covered, parodied, had umpteen response and "sequel" songs riding its coattails, and still gets radio play to this day.

But it's also been pilloried, banned and subject to quite possibly the strangest investigation in the history of the FBI.

Read on for the weird and wonderful tale of 'Louie Louie':

Who wrote and first recorded 'Louie Louie'?

Louie Louie

'Louie Louie' has become synonymous with the sound of the 1960s, but it was actually first recorded and released in the previous decade.

Richard Berry wrote 'Louie Louie' in 1955. The inspiration for the song came from an R&B take on Rene Touzet's 'El Loco Cha Cha', which was performed by Ricky Rillera and the Rhythm Rocker. That song itself was based on Rosendo Ruiz Jr's 'Amarren Al Loco'.

Richard Berry scrawled down the lyrics on a strip of toilet paper as they "fell out of the sky" into his mind.

El Loco Cha Cha Cha

He recorded it in April 1956, and it was released under the Richard Berry and the Pharaohs banner a year later in April 1957, originally as the B-side to Berry's take on 'You Are My Sunshine'.

As with countless B-sides that eclipsed their As, it was a local DJ who flipped the record and preferred the other side. In this case, Hunter Hancock of KGFJ gave the other side enough attention to help it become a local hit.

It was re-released in 1961 and 1964, but despite shifting tens of thousands of copies, it never actually charted on the national stage.

Who first scored a major hit with 'Louie Louie'?

Louie Louie

As soon as it emerged, everyone started covering 'Louie Louie', with what seemed like every local R&B act popping it into their set.

Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers recorded a vital version... it was Roberts who added that "Let's give it to 'em, RIGHT NOW!!" moment before the solo, and their take helped further popularise the song, though it still failed to chart nationally.

Then, in 1963, Portland rock 'n' rollers The Kingsmen recorded 'Louie Louie' in a one-hour session, with the recording apparently planned as an audition tape to help them get a gig on a cruise ship. It was a stunning, remarkable, shock-to-the-system of a recording, but initially it made no impact at all.

Louie Louie

It wasn't until Boston DJ Arnie Ginsburg started giving the disc heavy rotation that people really started listening. It's widely reported that Ginsburg actually first spun the record on his 'Worst Record of the Week' segment, thanks to its ramshackle vibe.

And even though Paul Revere & the Raiders had also recorded a smoother and more hotly-tipped version of 'Louie Louie' within a week of The Kingsmen, actually at the same studio, it was clearly the Kingsmen take that had the public's backing, and it bubbled under and bubbled on.

It peaked at number two in December 1963, and by the following April had sold over a million copies.

How and why did 'Louie Louie' spark bans and an FBI investigation?

An R&B standard, a gloriously messy cover, a slow burn up the chart and a rock 'n' roll classic is born. It's a fun story but not entirely unique one in the history of music, even if 'Louie Louie' is maybe the very best example.

But what makes the story of 'Louie Louie' so different is the strange investigation of it its lyrics.

Richard Berry wrote the song about a sailor missing his woman back home. ("A fine little girl, she waits for me / Me catch the ship across the sea"). That's pretty much it.

But when The Kingsmen recorded their version, manager Ken Chase was apparently seeking a "live" sound, so he popped singer Jack Ely in the middle of the band, and stuck the microphone way up high.

Louie, Louie

That meant Jack, who also wore braces, had to stretch and yell and holler to be heard over the racket his band was making. Add that to the fact that he was riffing on Berry's original part-Calypso, cod-Jamaican intonation, and you've got lyrics that are not just thrillingly rock 'n' roll, but also pretty incomprehensible.

American parents were already incredibly wary of rock 'n' roll, having long railed against "their" children listening to "Black" music.

They wanted to shield their kids' eyes from Elvis Presley's sexy swivelling hips and the lascivious sounds coming from their stereos.

But the first recorded complaint about 'Louie Louie' is said to have come from a teenager (the turncoat), who wrote to the governor of Indiana Matt Welsh, saying the words were obscene.

Welsh and his secretary Jack New slowed the record down and started hearing things that really weren't there, and via the Indiana Broadcasters Association, he informally banned the record across the state.

The Kinks - Louie Louie (Official Audio)

The Kingsmen denied the suggestion, with drummer Lynn Easton telling the Indianapolis Star: "We took the words from the Richard Berry version and recorded them faithfully – there was no clowning around."

Despite the denial, the story picked up, and parents then started writing to then-US Attorney General Robert Kennedy to complain about the "pornographic" words.

"The lyrics are so filthy I cannot enclose them in this letter," read one letter.

"We all know there is obscene materials available for those who seek it, but when they start sneaking this material in the guise of the latest teenage rock and roll hit record, these morons have gone too far.

"This land of ours is headed for an extreme state of moral degradation."

A few months after the assassination of John F Kennedy, the FBI somehow decided that it was absolutely worth their time to launch a massive investigation into a pop song.

What happened with the FBI investigation into 'Louie Louie'?

Empowered by the law against Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material, the FBI spent more than TWO YEARS investigating the words of 'Louie Louie'.

The finished report was buried but later emerged thanks to The Louie Report, and it's more than 140 (ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY) pages long.

hey spoke to the record label, management and Richard Berry, but apparently didn't even speak to The Kingsmen singer. Not once in 31 months.

"I was never contacted about the lyrics," Ely said years later. "Nobody ever wanted to talk to the guy who actually sang the supposedly dirty words."

The Kingsmen - Louie, Louie (Shindig 1965)

Ely had actually been unceremoniously shunted out of the band soon after the hit, with his role being taken over by the drummer Lynn Easton.

Instead of an interview with Ely, a chunk of the report is taken up by FBI agents taking wild guesses at what the lyrics are.

When they wrapped up the investigation in 1965, they realised that because no one could work out the lyrics, that meant that they technically couldn't declare them as obscene.

Brilliantly, the secretary of the FCCV Ben F Waple wrote to the Wand Records label to ask if The Kingsmen had the "improper motivation" of recording intentionally unintelligible to provoke claims that they were obscene, even while acknowledging that the actual words were "unobjectionable".

Is there really any a obscenity in 'Louie Louie'?

While the lyrics of the song sung by Jack Ely are absolutely not pornographic or obscene in any way, there is one rude word in the song. But Jack doesn't sing it.

Exactly 56 seconds in, if you listen incredibly closely, you can hear drummer Lynn Easton yelp the word "F**k!" – his unscripted response to a dropped drumstick.

Who has covered 'Louie Louie'?

Louie Louie (Remastered 2001)

Who hasn't covered 'Louie Louie'?!?

Even before The Kingsmen, there had been plenty of covers of Richard Berry's 'Louie Louie' by swathes of forgotten R&B stars, and as we've already noted, it was Rockin' Robin Roberts who added key elements that The Kingsmen would adopt.

Then there was the contemporaneous Paul Revere and the Raiders version, before the floodgates opened.

'Louie Louie' is one of the most-covered songs in the history of popular music, and we'll just mention some of the very biggest bands who put their spin on it.

Louie Louie (Remastered 1976 album)

Otis Redding, The Surfaris, The Beach Boys, The Standells, The Kinks, The Sonics, The Troggs, Africa, The Mothers of Invention, Flamin' Groovies, Motörhead, Barry White, Mo Tucker, Johnny Thunders, The Boby Fuller Four, Robert Plant, Patti Smith, Black Flag, Toots and the Maytals and The Clash, among many others.

But one version we have to mention is Iggy Pop's live take, captured for posterity on the raucous Metallic KO album that captured the last Stooges show before they broke up in 1973.

Iggy being Iggy, his version is just as unintelligible as The Kingsmen, but he wilfully made his take utterly obscene, wittily adding in lyrics from the supposed "obscene" alternate lyrics that had now been doing the rounds for years.

What parodies and sequel songs has 'Louie Louie' spawned?

Louie Louie Go Home

As well as all those covers of 'Louie Louie', straight or otherwise, there have also been a number of spinoffs, sequels, and silly parodies.

Paul Revere & the Raiders, who had done their own 'Louie Louie', recorded 'Louie Go Home' in 1964, a song later covered by David Bowie and The Who.

Jack Ely, now out of the Kingsmen, tried to repeat the trick with 'Love That Louie', released as Jack E Lee and The Squires.

Then there are songs with names like 'Louie Come Home', 'Louie Come Back', 'Louie Louie Louie', 'Louise Louise', 'Louie Louie Got Married', '55 Minute Louie-Louie' 'Lily Lily', 'Bernie Bernie', 'Santa Santa', and more than we can even begin to list now.