Louie-Louie

“The greatest rock-‘n’-roll song of all time is.....”
Suddenly the entire Messenger newsroom fell silent, 70-80 people — you could hear a pin drop.
“‘Louie-Louie’ as covered by the Kingsmen,” I said.
The newsroom erupted. Sheer cacophony.
“No-no-no,” people screamed. Hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s were loudly trumpeted.
The guy who day-cared my dog, ex of the Mighty Mezz, who I once worked with, says it’s “Johnny-B-Goode” by Chuck Berry. It is indeed one of the best. It has one of my three favorite rock-‘n’-roll lines: “Strummin’ with the rhythm that the drivers made.”
Ya gotta be a railfan to understand that. A two-cylindered steam locomotive — most are two cylinders — makes four chuffs per driving-wheel rotation: “chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff!” That’s four beats to the bar.
The other two fabulous lines are: -a) “just like a Willys in four-wheel drive,” from “Sugar-Magnolia” by the Grateful Dead, and -b) “roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair,” from “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen.
“Louie-Louie” has no good lines. You can hardly understand it. What it has is that fabulous background riff that gets me swaying, that prompted sin-and-degradation among listeners. “Dah-Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp.....” Bodies writhing in torrid sex-moves. (Gasp!)
“Dah-Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp.” Hear that and I start groovin’.
Over-and-over I listened to it the other night, at least six YouTube clips — that headline and the first “Louie-Louie” are different YouTube links; click away readers.
I also listened to an interview with Jack Ely, lead-singer of the Kingsmen at that time.
“Greatest rock-‘n’-roll song of all time.” I’ve e-mailed that all over the planet. I’m not a dancer, but “Louie-Louie” always loosens me up.
It became a hit during my sophomore year in my Bach-worshipping college. I’d play Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring on our dining-hall upright, then segue into “Ba-Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp.”
Ely said the recording engineer went out of his way to boost the back-beat, and thereby made the wording just about inaudible. Ely’s mic was on an overhead boom. He had to just about shout, and that was up into it. He was also singing through braces back then.
Lyrics were so slurred they became bait for the morality police. Wording was legit, but it was so garbled zealots could make it dirty. Even the F.B.I. weighed in; J. Edgar Hoover in highest dudgeon.
Salacious lyrics were posited, and “Louie-Louie” was banned here-and-there. I’ve gone over the wording the F.B.I. came up with. It’s pure fabrication, plus they missed what we always heard: “I’ll never leave her again” as “I’ll never lay her again.”
Even without the supposed dirtiness I think “Louie-Louie” could stand on its own. It’s that driving back-beat. Pity the poor keyboard player, like the snare-drummer in Ravel’s Boléro, doomed to no variation at all.
Check out that second YouTube Link, readers. There he is, over-and-over, slogging away at his keyboard.
“Ba-Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp.
Ba-Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! Bomp-Bomp.
A-Louie-LewEye; oh no; me gotta go.”
What the marching sousaphones played in “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”
The greatest rock-‘n’-roll song of all time.
Sadly Jack Ely died in 2015 almost age-72. I read somewhere he got into Christian-rock, although to me that’s an oxymoron. My neighbor Sunday-School superintendent told me Elvis was “the bane of western civilization.” (Her exact words.)

• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over 12 years ago. Best job I ever had — I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well.) (“Canandaigua” is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)