'Louie, Louie'
Kingsmen Awarded Royalties
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 10, 1998; Page A01

It may be the most distinctive riff in all of rock music, a stuttering, funky lick that instantly summons memories of garage bands, beer blasts and frat-house revelry: Duh-duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh.

Since its release in 1963, the Kingsmen's version of "Louie, Louie" has imprinted itself in almost every baby boomer's mind and generated millions of dollars in sales. What few people know is that for more than 30 years, the Kingsmen themselves never saw a dime in royalties for their work.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ensured that the group will finally get paid.

By declining to hear an appeal by two record companies that held the rights to the recording, the high court effectively ended a five-year legal battle between the firms and 10 original and replacement members of the Portland, Ore., group. The court's action allows the Kingsmen's members to collect about $200,000 in royalties that have been held in trust since the group sued in 1993 on grounds that the companies had failed to honor a 1968 contract.

The action also guarantees that "Louie, Louie" will wind up whence it came. After the record companies, Gusto Records and GML, both of Nashville, admitted last year that they had failed to pay any royalties, a federal judge awarded the Kingsmen ownership of their original master recordings of the song. That will entitle them to future profits.

"It's over, and we're ecstatic," said band member Dick Peterson, 52, who has toured with the group for 35 years and was the lead plaintiff in the suit. "We took this sword up in the name of other artists. We pledged our homes and cars and our kids' futures to stay in this fight. . . . But we knew this [issue] wasn't unique to the Kingsmen. There are many, many musical acts that have not been paid."

The Kingsmen's version of "Louie, Louie" is easily the best remembered of more than 700 recorded versions of the song. In part, it's because of its infectious party spirit. But it's also because the song was a cause celebre in its day, with barely intelligible lyrics that many people presumed were obscene.

"Louie, Louie" was written by Richard Berry, a black R&B singer from Los Angeles who recorded it in 1956. The song was a staple of party bands in the Pacific Northwest when the founding members of the Kingsmen -- four white teenage friends from Portland -- recorded it as an audition tape for a job on a cruise line in April 1963.

Not only did the group fail to get the cruise gig, but a single of the recording sold only modestly when it was released in late 1963. "It would have died then and there," Peterson says.

What happened next is one of those pivotal moments in American popular culture.

During Christmas break that year, some college students in Indiana brought the song home and played it for their parents. Suspecting that lead singer Jack Ely's nearly indecipherable style was masking indecent lyrics, the parents complained to state officials. Indiana's governor eventually banned the song from sales and airplay in the state -- which, of course, revived its flagging sales. The song eventually rose to No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart.

The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission subsequently investigated, but an administrative-law judge found the song "indecipherable at any speed" and declined to ban it.

The song featured a driving rock rhythm and slurred vocals by Ely, an original member. Rock critic Greil Marcus has called the Kingsmen's recording "raucous, brutal and clumsy."

Despite that -- or maybe because of it -- the loose style has been copied by thousands of amateur bands, and the song has been recorded by the likes of the Kinks, Barry White and the punk group Black Flag. The song began to reach a new audience of college students in the 1970s, when it was included in the John Belushi movie "Animal House."

"For me, the coolest thing about 'Louie Louie' was this: I could play it on the guitar," humorist Dave Barry wrote in a book published last year. "In fact, just about anybody could play it, including a reasonably trainable chicken. Three chords, nothing tricky. . . . When we were finally done playing and the last out-of-tune notes had leaked out of the room, we'd look at each other and say, 'Hey! We sound like the Kingsmen!' And the beauty of that song is, we kind of did."

Far from obscene or indecent, the song is actually a bittersweet song about a lovesick sailor who dreams of a girl he left behind. Louie, said Peterson, is the bartender to whom the sailor tells his story. According to the International Lyrics Server, a site on the Internet, the words are as follows:

Louie Louie, me gotta go
Louie Louie, me gotta go.
A fine girl, she wait for me
Me catch the ship across the sea
I sailed the ship all alone
I never think I'll make it home.

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Three nights and days we sailed the sea
Me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there.
I smell the rose in her hair.

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Me see Jamaican moon above
It won't be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I never leave again.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.

Scott A. Edelman, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented the Kingsmen, said: "It's an important case, not just for the Kingsmen but for all the artists who had the misfortune of being associated with unscrupulous record companies. Most record companies are honest, but there are a handful out there that aren't. This sends a message to those record companies" that fail to live up to their obligations, he said.

The court's "rescission" of the contract, which allows the group to recapture the master recordings, could have a wide impact on software developers, screenwriters and other musicians, he said.

Gusto, GML and its attorney did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Peterson said members of the group first sought royalties after the record company that held the rights to it at the time licensed the song to the producers of "Animal House." But the company, he said, "just ignored us."

In 1986, the song's writer, Richard Berry, was given $2 million in royalties after pressure was brought by a songwriters group, but the band continued to get zero. As for the group itself, questions of who deserved a royalty were further clouded. At least 20 musicians have been members of the Kingsmen since the band's founding.

It wasn't until 1993 that the group was able to sort out its internal affairs and get a lawyer to handle the case. A federal judge ultimately canceled the original 1968 contract and awarded the group royalties dating from the time they sued.

"Louie, Louie" continued to be a moneymaker for the companies, heard in the soundtrack of numerous commercials and in such movies as "Mr. Holland's Opus." A film deal like that can reap up to $100,000, according to Peterson. The song has also been played thousands of times on oldies radio stations, each time accruing a few pennies in royalties.

Edelman estimates that the Kingsmen lost "millions of dollars" in royalties between 1968 and 1993, but Peterson remains upbeat. "There's still terrific value in it," he said yesterday by phone from Portland, where he is a music producer. "Are you kidding? Think of the movies. Every time you hear it on the radio, that's our song."