The Portland Band Under FBI Investigation

How Can We Stamp Out This Menace ? ? ? ?

The lyrics to Louie Louie can’t be identified. The Kingsmen rendition that made the song famous is considered babble. Legally, this is a good thing since the FBI once breathed down their necks because of the performance.

Richard Berry’s original Louie Louie version has clear and documented vocals. Newfound Kingsmen listeners had no idea about them. Kids and adults couldn’t tell what words he was saying, and many of them assumed the worst. Many conservative adults were trying to discredit rock and roll as either devil worship, or overtly sexual, and therefore not “good for the children.” The music industry poured gasoline over these flames during the Elvis days in an attempt to kill rock and roll, and they were ready to do it again with “Louie Louie.”

Indiana banned the song, on the order of their governor Matthew Welsh. Parents wrote directly to Robert Kennedy and J Edgar Hoover with their concern for the song. Multiple federal governmental bodies in America investigated it, including the USPS, FCC, FTC, and the FBI. An untold amount of money, and human resources, was spent on investigating this song for around two and a half years. They eventually decided that the words were so hard to understand that they could not, in good conscience, prosecute anyone for the alleged profanity.

Now, the story of Louie Louie is somehow more complicated than one crazy federal investigation. It’s the story of a growing rock ‘n’ roll scene in the quirky far-flung region of the Pacific Northwest. The area gets unfairly glossed over in music history. But not today, not with me.

I published a piece about this story in greater detail at Ragtag Magazine. A growing Northwest magazine turning our everyday experiences into campfire-type stories. You can find my article here, and the full website here.