When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents visited the New York City office of Wand Records company president Florence Greenburg in 1965, they demanded to hear tapes from every recording session associated with the rock’n’roll song “Louie Louie.”
Performed by the band known as the Kingsmen of Portland, Ore., and released on the Wand label in 1963, “Louie Louie” shot up to No. 2 on the national charts in 1964 and sold millions of records.
The
FBI was in hot pursuit of a case to prove the tune’s lyrics were vulgar.
Greenburg, who formed the Wand label in 1961, claimed the FBI was barking up
the wrong tree.
“It’s all nonsense,” she said. “There was no dirty record. I wouldn’t take anything dirty. The lyrics to ‘Louie Louie’ were completely unobjectionable.”
Greenburg added: “I could use another one like that.”
That didn’t happen. The Kingsmen had a lot of turnover in personnel but continued to churn out records for several years. Success was fleeting, however.
It didn’t matter, said music historian Jim Esposito. “Many refer to the Kingsmen’s recording of ‘Louie Louie’ as the first successfully famous slab of garage rock,” he said. “It remains a quintessential rock’n’roll recording and one of the most recorded songs in the past 70 years of pop music.”
Sources agree that “Louie Louie” is the No. 2 most recorded song in history. (“Yesterday,” released in 1965 by the Beatles is No. 1.)
A new generation of music fans was introduced to “Louie Louie” in 1978, when the song became the anthem of the comedy film “Animal House,” sung by Bruto Blutarsky (John Belusi) and his Delta House fraternity brothers “like a bunch of drunken Romans in bed sheet togas.”
Curiously, the film was set at mythical Faber College in 1962 (a year prior to the Kingsmen’s recording of “Louie Louie”), making it one of the movie industry’s classic anachronisms (a chronological inconsistency).
Early in 1978, Universal Studios approached the University of Oregon about filming on campus in Eugene. Jim Scheppke of The Oregon Encyclopedia reported that university president William Beaty Boyd signed a $20,000 deal stipulating that the filmmakers not identify UO in the movie.
A halfway house became the derelict Delta fraternity house. Most of the movie’s interior scenes were filmed nearby at the original Sigma Nu and Phi Kappa Psi fraternity houses. President Boyd’s office in Johnson Hall became the office of Faber College Dean Vernon Wormer (John Vernon), who was driven to pull the Deltas’ charter.
Delta House brothers replied:
Among those invited to the Delta House Toga Party was Marion Wormer (Verna Bloom), wife of the esteemed dean (shown above).
Another special guest was Clorette DePasto (Sarah Holcomb), the 13-year-old daughter of the town mayor. After the girl passed out from drinking the forbidden purple passion, brothers deposited her into a shopping cart and delivered her to her home.
“The movie was the second most popular movie in 1978 after ‘Grease,’” according to Scheppke. “‘Animal House’ was produced for less than $3 million. It grossed $140 million in theaters in the United States and Canada.”
“‘Animal House’ is ranked 36 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest film comedies of all time,” he added.
“For decades, the University of Oregon tried, unsuccessfully, to hide its participation in ‘Animal House,’” Scheppke said. “Today, the film has become part of the culture of the university – a part of its brand. Movie locations are pointed out on campus tours, and Otis Day and the Knights’ rendition of ‘Shout’ is sung at UO Duck football games.”
The homecoming parade scene was filmed in the City of Cottage Grove, 23 miles south of Eugene. Officials agreed to close down Main Street for three days to allow filming. The “ghosts of ‘Animal House’” return annually to celebrate.
In 1986, Richard Berry, who wrote “Louie Louie” in 1955, was living on welfare at his mother’s house in Los Angeles. California Cooler, America’s original wine cooler brand, wanted to use the Kingsmen’s hit in a television commercial, but the company’s lawyers were told they had to get Berry’s permission.
As a result, Berry regained partial rights to the song…and became a millionaire.
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