THREAD: It's time to retell the incredible story of the song "Louie Louie." It involves recording mistakes, accidental success, a distraught nation and a very stupid FBI investigation, so buckle up:

Richard Berry wrote Louie Louie in the 1950s, and it was covered by many rock 'n roll groups. A young band in Portland, Oregon named The Kingsmen recorded its own version in the spring of 1963.

Coincidentally, there were *two* bands that recorded Louie Louie in that same studio during the same week. The other? Paul Revere and the Raiders, which went on to have four Top-10 hits in the ensuing years.

The Kingsmen version went on to have the greater success.

The Kingsmen spent $50 for a Saturday morning recording session. The band recorded Louie Louie in just one take, unwittingly creating one of the most legendary tracks in American music history …

If you've never heard of the hidden gems in this song, you're in for a treat.

The track is comedy of errors. Louie Louie is best known for Jack Ely’s muffled, distant-sounding vocals. Ely wore braces and had barely rehearsed the lyrics. Worst of all, he strained to have his voice heard by a microphone placed high above his head.

Around the minute mark, drummer Lynn Easton fumbles with a drumstick and shouts, “FUCK!”

You can hear it around the 8-second mark of this clip (headphones will help):

Then comes the crazy and wild guitar solo, followed by another major error. Ely messes up and comes back in too quickly with the vocals.

The young musicians did an amazing recover ...

Ely quickly caught himself. Easton on drums had the presence of mind to cover up the mistake with a drum fill, then Ely jumped back in.

You can hear it around the 10-second mark of this clip:

Random shouting, bad sound quality, unintelligible vocals and an embarrassing singer mistake — all in a 2 minute, 45 second track! But the band only had time for one take, so they had to make the best of it.

The Kingsmen's version somehow edged out the more polished & professional Paul Revere version.

By late 1963, the song had become a national sensation. Here's a Top 10 list in Hammond, Indiana from the weekend of the JFK assassination:

Louie Louie peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It was kept off the top spot by a Belgian performer named The Singing Nun who went to No. 1 with a French-language song called Dominique. (It was a weird decade for music.)

This saga might have ended there: as a funny footnote in music history with an amateurish track reaching high up on the charts.

However, this is where the Louie Louie story goes completely off the rails ...

If I asked you to sing the lyrics to Louie Louie, could you do it?

Here’s another question: do you have any idea what the song is about?

Believe it or not, Louie Louie was written as a Jamaican folk song.

It is about a lonely sailor who longs for a woman back on land. Here are the actual lyrics:

Ely's garbled lyrics wound up getting The Kingsmen into a heap of trouble.

Rumors spread throughout America that the song's lyrics were filled with raunchy sexual references.

Concerned parents sent letters to elected leaders from coast to coast, and even to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Indiana Gov. Matthew Welsh told reporters his "ears tingled" upon hearing the record and he subsequently labeled the song as "obscene."

The FCC decided to investigate. The subsequent ruling is an all-time classic: Louie Louie could not be considered obscene because Ely’s lyrics were so unintelligible that the FCC had no idea what he was saying.

It can’t be obscene if it can’t be understood in the first place!

That ruling did little to quell the controversy.

The FBI got involved and conducted its own investigation. This might be the most ridiculous investigation FBI ever carried out.

The full 119-page report is now archived in the FBI file "vault." https://vault.fbi.gov/louie-louie-the-song/louie-louie-the-song/view

The report includes supposed versions of the alleged lyrics, each different than the next. You'd think that would've been a clue it was *all* bullshit.

The FBI sent copies of the record to its sound laboratories to be studied. (Seriously.) In May 1964, the FBI came to the same conclusion as the FCC did earlier in the year:

And yet, even THAT didn't stop the FBI's investigation from dragging well into the next year. In June 1965, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover responded to a concerned mother's letter by personally reassuring her the investigation was still ongoing!

It’s difficult to fully grasp how utterly incompetent the FBI’s probe was unless you read the whole report. Investigators had no idea what they were investigating.

In one instance, they didn’t even know which year the song was recorded:

At another point, the FBI tried forcing the record company to hand over an isolated vocal track.

Just one problem: that didn't exist. The Kingsmen recorded Louie Louie using cheap monaural (single track) equipment. Ely's vocals couldn't be heard without hearing the whole band.

Now ... do you want to know the dumbest part of all of this? The FBI knew what the ACTUAL lyrics were THE WHOLE TIME. The FBI received an official copy of the lyrics from the publisher in early 1964, and received the lyrics again in March 1965:

In other words, the FBI spent years investigating Louie Louie in sound labs, trying to cross-check Ely's vocals alongside the alleged lyrics sent in by teenagers, pastors and frantic mothers — all while they could've just *read the actual lyrics sheets they were given*.

A full 18 months into the investigation, fresh out of other ideas, the FBI decided to just … ask one of The Kingsmen musicians about the song. He of course answered it was not obscene.

The investigation concluded around the end of 1965, after 2 years of wasted time.

The greatest irony of all? The FBI investigators never noticed the *actual* swear word in the song when the drummer shouted the F-word after fumbling his drumstick.

There were Keystone Kop moments all over America. In Texas, a store clerk was charged with selling an obscene phonograph. Case was dropped b/c the officer didn't mark the specific record sold as evidence (as if the lyrics somehow change on a separate copy of an identical record?)

Incidentally, all this controversy made The Kingsmen an even more desirable booking at dance clubs across the country.

But don't think you could get away with too much at these dances ... see the bottom of this ad in the Anderson (Indiana) Herald Bulletin, Oct. 1964:

The group broke up in 1968, got back together briefly in the 1970s, then started toured again in the 1980s. A version of the group still performs to this day.

The band is pictured in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram show preview in 1989:

So that's the story of The Kingsmen and Louie Louie.

The next time you hear the song, enjoy the drummer's yell, the singer's mistake and the 2 minutes, 45 seconds from a group of young musicians who made rock 'n roll history on a Saturday morning. #TheEnd

Postscript...

I found this great newspaper editorial from Seymour, Indiana during the British Invasion. The newspaper complimented The Beatles for being more family-friendly than The Kingsmen.

John Lennon's "More popular than Jesus" controversy came two years later.