Louie Louie – The Kingsmen at The Delta House – 1983

“Louie Louie” – Single by the Kingsmen from the album The Kingsmen in Person
B-side “Haunted Castle”
Released June 1963
Recorded April 6, 1963
Length 2:42 (Jerden), 2:24 (Wand)
Label Jerden 712, Wand 143
Songwriter Richard Berry
Producers Ken Chase and Jerry Dennon
Charted No.2 in US, No.26 in UK

“Louie Louie” was written by an R&B singer named Richard Berry in 1955. With his group The Pharaohs, he was also the first to record the song; it got some airplay in some cities in the Western US when it was released in 1957. Various garage bands heard it and started covering the song until it became a phenomenon with the Kingsmen’s 1963 version. While much of the song’s notoriety comes from the indecipherable lyrics, in Berry’s original version the words are quite clear. The song is about a sailor who spends three days traveling to Jamaica to see his girl.

On 6 April 1963, the Kingsmen, a rock and roll group from Portland, Oregon, chose “Louie Louie” for their second recording, their first having been an unreleased acetate of “Peter Gunn Rock”. The Kingsmen recorded the song at Northwestern Inc. Motion Pictures & Recording Studios at 411 SW 13th Avenue in Portland, Oregon. The one hour session, originally intended to produce an audition tape for a summer cruise ship gig, cost either $36, or somewhere in between, and the band split the cost.

The session was produced by Ken Chase, a local disc jockey on the AM rock station KISN who also owned The Chase, the teen nightclub where the Kingsmen were the house band. The engineer for the session was the studio owner, Robert Lindahl. The Kingsmen’s lead vocalist, Jack Ely, based his version on the recording by Rockin’ Robin Roberts with the Fabulous Wailers, but unintentionally reintroduced Berry’s original stop-time rhythm as he showed the other members how to play it with a 1–2–3, 1–2, 1–2–3 beat instead of the 1–2–3–4, 1–2, 1–2–3–4 beat on the Wailers record. The night before their recording session, the band played a 90-minute version of the song during a gig at a local teen club. The Kingsmen’s studio version was recorded in one partial and one full take.They also recorded “Jamaica Farewell” and what became the B-side of the release, an original “surf instrumental” by Ely and keyboardist Don Gallucci called “Haunted Castle”.

This was the only Kingsmen song with lead vocals by Jack Ely. Before it became a hit, he quit when band leader Lynn Easton assumed vocals and ordered Ely to drums. On TV performances, Easton would lip-sync to Ely’s vocals.

Ely later tried to capitalize on the success of “Louie Louie” by releasing similar songs on his own, including “Louie Louie 66,” “Love That Louie,” and “Louie Go Home.”

In the summer of 1983, The Kingmen shot their Louie Louie video in the dining room of the Phi Kappa Psi chapter house in Eugene.