Louie Louie and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Rock ‘n’ roll legend Jack Ely (right) has signed up to a2f2a.com, started by UK artist Billy Bragg and p2pnet founder Jon Newton to put musicians and their fans together.
The goal?
- Help each community better understand the other;
- Help find a practical and workable system which offers artists fair remuneration in exchange for access to material by fans; and
- Help set the agenda for discussions about the role P2P can play within the emergent digital record industry.
In the intro to our post on Ely’ views on copyright, artists` payments, fans and, of course, file sharing, “If his name doesn`t instantly ring a bell, unless you`ve been living under a rock all your life, you`ll recognize the song Jack and the Kingsmen made famous in the 60s,” p2pnet said, going on:
“It was Richard Berry`s 1955 Louie Louie, banned in Indiana and attacked by the FBI because of its supposedly indecent lyrics.
“Actually, there was nothing wrong with the words. It was just no-one could understand them. 
“Since 1963, when Louie Louie was released with Jack on vocals, it`s been heard literally hundreds of millions of times around the world. Even today, you can hardly tune in to a classic rock station without hearing the song at least once. And everyone and his brother has made a cover.”
‘A’ cover? Newton confessed to downloading 4o versions. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
p2pnet went on, “So he must be living in a palace, up to his eyeballs in money. Right? But he and his wife live in a mobile home in Oregon`s desert country where Jack has a horse farm. Their income is based on her teacher`s pension, and his social security cheques. And as far as homes go, they`re still paying a mortgage.”
Another a2f2a member and p2pnet contributor, singer/songwriter/scribe Tom Barger, is a fan of Bill Patry, the famous copyright blogger and senior copyright counsel at Google.
Patry is also the author of Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, 2009 Oxford University Press. Barger recalls a passage referring to what’s today the Louie Louie Scandal, to wit »»»
page 134-135
An amusing example of alleged danger posed to society by rock and roll was the FBI investigationinto the lyrics of the song “Louie Louie,” as recorded in 1963, by the Kingsmen, a short-livedrock band from Washington State (5) The song was written in 1955 by Richard Berry, a Los Angeles musician who wrote a first-person song in which a Jamaican sailor tells Louie, a bartender, that he’s leaving to meet his girl (”Louie, Louie/Me gotta go”).
The band broke up shortly after the recording, with lead singer/rhythm guitarist Jack Ely never to return.
Ely’s voice on the recording could not be replicated by those who came after because of its uniqueness — Ely wore braces at the time of the recording and had strained his voice the night before in a ninety-minute jam session; as a result the lyrics were slurred and indecipherable, which oddly enough led to the moral panic.
The moral panic was launched by the FBI at J. Edgar Hoover’s (right) personal insistence, although it was Hoover’s obsession that gave the song its seemingly enduring popularity. Hoover was convinced that the lyrics were obscene and launched an extensive two-year investigation. There was also an FCC hearing at which the FCC attempted to discern the actual lyrics. (6) (It was an urban legend that the “true” lyrics could be discovered by playing the 45 rpm single at 33-1/3 rpm).
The Post Office conducted an investigation too. The song was banned on many radio stations and in Indiana by fiat of the governor. Nothing came of the government’s more than two-year investigation, because the lyrics were not in fact even “dirty.”
Because this is a book about copyright, I want to point out that for 30 years, the Kingsmen were not paid any royalties; it was only after suit in 1998 that they were awarded ownership of all their early recordings, including “Louie Louie”(7) Richard Berry, who wrote the song and recorded it in April 1965 with the Pharaohs, was paid a one-time, flat amount of $750 for all publication rights, and thus didn’t benefit from the sale of the 2,000 covers of his song.(8)
Moral panics have been described as “a reaction by a group of people based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society.” It has also been more broadly defined as an “episode, condition, person or group of persons” that has in recent times been “defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (9) Moral panics have occurred in many cultures and times, including the well-known examples of the Salem witch hunts, comic books,(l0) and McCarthyism. They play on deep fears, and are greatly aided by the medias eagerness to sell papers or gain viewers. Youth are a particular target for moral panics.
Footnotes:
Chapter 7 Moral Panics, Folk Devils, and Fear as a Tactical Weapon pages 238-240
5. The original group consisted of Jack Ely (vocalist/rhythm guitar), Lynn Easton (drummer), Mike Mitchell (guitar). Don Gallucci (piano), and Bob Nordby (bass guitar). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingsmen.
The story is told in David Marsh’s 2004 book, (”Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the Worlds Most Famous Rock ‘n Roll Song Including the Full Details of Its Torture and Persecution at the Hands . . . Introducing for the First Time Anywhere, the Actual Dirty Lyrics.”) (The book was published in a second edition by the University of Michigan Press in 2004.) The drummer on the recording, Dick Peterson, published a book in 2006. (”Louie Louie: Me Gotta Go Now) (Jim Ojala ed. Thalian Press). There are also a number of Web sites devoted to the song.
See: http://louielouieweb. tripod.com/defaulthtm (a site that aggregates links to Louie Louie Web sites); http://www.louielouie.net/; and http://www.xs4all.nl/Ntdg/.
The lyics which so confused J. Edgar, as supplied to p2pnet and a2f2a by Jack, were (and still are 
)
Chorus:
Louie Louie
Oh no, sayin` me gotta go
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya sayin`
Louie Louie
Oh no, sayin` we gotta go
Me find little girl, she waits for me
Me catch a ship across the sea
Me sail that ship by my all alone
Me never think how I may get home
Chorus:
Three nights and days I sail the sea
Me think of little girl, ah, constantly
Upon that ship I dream she there
I smelled the rose, ah, in her hair
Chorus:
Me see Jamaica the moon above
It won`t be long me see me love
To take her in my arms again
I`ll tell her I`ll never leave her again
Chorus:
I said, me gotta go now
Let`s go!
(Thanks, Tom and Bill)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
p2pnet - Louie Louie star Jack Ely joins a2f2a, October 27, 2009
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October 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
This looks good except that Dick Peterson is the current drummer for the Kingsmen and wasn’t anywhere near our band when Louie Louie was recorded. Lynn Easton was the drummer on Louie Louie. Peterson could never in his dreams be as good a drummer as Easton was, and as far as I know, still is. Dick Peterson’s book talks much about a subject of which he has no actual first hand knowledge. He just simply wasn’t there, period. For one thing, the recording cost $50.00, not a lesser amount which he has been referred to. For another….oh well it really doesn’t matter.
The other thing that the other writer got wrong is that we were a band from Portland, Oregon.