The Atrocious Music Collection: #7 in a series
Artists: Various
Album Title: The Best of Louie, Louie
Category: Cover VersionsYear: 1983
Cover art style: Cheap, minimal, hot pink, screaming “Buy This Record!”
Audio samples: Louie, Louie (obviously). The entire album is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g21H3wU3Ihs. See below for timings.
Acquisition: Unsure. Might have been mail-ordered direct from Rhino Records
Click on pictures for full-sized images
A celebration of a single song, this record is unique in the Atrocious Music Collection. It contains ten versions of Louie, Louie, the original plus nine covers.
The history of Louie, Louie is fairly well known (and easy enough to find on the web), except that most people probably assume the nearly unintelligible, one-take, mistake-filled version by The Kingsmen is the original (found at 11:37 on the link above). It is not. Richard Berry (no relation to Chuck) wrote the song in 1955, eight years before it became an unlikely hit for the unlikely Kingsmen. You can hear Berry’s calypso-influenced original at 1:08.
I feel badly for Berry. You can read the story yourself, but it’s an all-too common one in American music, involving bad deals, race, and fame & money going to someone else.
How The Kingsmen’s version became a hit is as mysterious as how any song becomes a hit, but they benefitted from serious anti-establishment cred when the FBI investigated the recording, looking for obscene lyrics. The original lyrics contain no such bad words, and the extremely poor recording quality of the Kingsmen version led the FBI to conclude the song was “unintelligible at any speed.” (One wonders if Ralph Nader intentionally echoed these words in his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed. I'm sure he didn't, but wish he did.)
The inability to understand the lyrics didn’t stop stations, and even the state of Indiana, from banning the song. Lovely.
The copious, and tiny-fonted, notes on the album reveal these nine covers barely scratch the surface. Radio stations KPTK and KFJC became promoters of the “multiple Louie, Louie cover” idea starting in 1980, leading eventually to “Lou-a-thons” of up to 200 versions (12 hours) on KPTK, and KFJC’s “Maximum Louie, Louie,” with over 300 versions, capped off with a guest appearance by Richard Berry himself.
There’s even an offer on the album to “Join the Louie, Louie Rebellion” for just $10 (plus $2 for postage and handling).
Someone has continued this effort onto the internet, and you can find a listing of more than 2,000 versions here. As that website points out, “This list is not complete, as one could never do a completely comprehensive inventory of Louie, Louie recordings, or water drops, for that matter.” Truer words were never scribed.
To the album: I think you can really enjoy all of this, so I recommend just playing the whole thing straight through. I’m serious – the pleasure is in the strangeness, the suspense, of the next cover. What’s this one going to be like? Only one track breaks 3 minutes, so any disappointment is momentary. Just wait a couple of minutes for the next version to start.
If you do want tips from me, I’d point you to three-in-a-row near the end of the album. First is The Doors-influenced version by The Last (14:13), which messes with the sacred Louie, Louie chord progression. Then Black Flag’s angry punk version (at 17:30) which messes with the words. Finally, the new-wave, 1980’s Bowie-influenced version by Les Dantz and His Orchestra (at 18:50), which messes with everything, including the song's soul, frankly.
And just out of curiosity, you know you’re going to want to hear the first track, by the Rice Marching Owls. However, the oddest version might be The Sandpipers’ laid-back, Spanish-language take (around the 9:00 mark).
There is a follow-up album to this one, a Best of Vol. 2, if you want to continue your exploration. And with YouTube, your choices are nearly endless. Listening to different versions of Louie, Louie could be a full-time job.
As KFJC summed it all up: “Louie, Louie is not just a song, but a way of life.”