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Originally posted by DeltAlum
Not that it matters, but to be technical, I doubt that President Herbert Hoover cared much about Louie Louie, but FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover probably did. Heck, he didn't even like Richard Nixon.
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My bad, DeltAlum. Thanks for the correction. My brain knows the difference, but sometimes my typing fingers won't listen to my brain.
(BTW, just to make sure we make all Greek connections, J. Edgar was a KA, while Herbert wasn't Greek.)
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Frankly, there was no way to understand the words without having them written out in front of you. I had a copy of the above lyrics (the words in ( ) are my addition as I recall the record). Of course nobody would believe me when I read them. Thus is the stuff of urban legends.
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As I understand it, a number of factors contributed to the fact that the words were almost incomprehensible in the Kingsmen's recording:
-- Lead singer Jack Ely had strained his voice participating in a marathon 90-minute "Louie Louie" jam the night before the session.
-- Ely was singing with braces on his teeth.
-- The boom microphone in the studio was fixed way too high for Ely, who had to stand on tiptoe and sing up into the mike.
-- What the band thought was a rehearsal run-through turned out to be the one and only take of the song.
-- The words are in a mock pidgen-English to begin with.
You're right DeltAlum -- definititely the stuff of urdan legends. A guy named Dave Marsh wrote a book (no longer in print, apparently) about 10 years ago on the "Louie, Louie" phenomenon -- the truth is even more entertaining than the legend.