08 Oct
511: Censorship and the investigation into “Louie Louie”
“Louie Louie” has become a standard in pop music, with hundreds of versions recorded by different artists, but version by The Kingsmen recorded in 1963 is the best-known recording. The song is written in the style of a Jamaican ballad; and tells, in simple verse-chorus form, the first-person story of a Jamaican sailor returning to the island to see his lady love. The singer brags of his “fine little girl” to the Louie of the title, presumably a bartender. The Kingsmen’s version became the subject of a J. Edgar Hoover-led FBI investigation about the supposed but non-existent obscenity of the lyrics, an investigation that ended without prosecution.