Mike Mitchell, the most famous guitarist of The Kingsmen’s Louie Louie, has died at the age of 77.
A founding member of the group, said he “passed away peacefully” on his birthday last Friday, drummer Dick Peterson confirmed to Rolling Stone.
Kind And Generous
“He has been the most kind and generous person in the world,” the group said in a statement on its official website.
“Mike was very popular for his kindness, humor and his sense of music,” they added.
Musical Band Association
The Kingsmen were formed in Portland, Oregon in 1959, four years before they gained international acclaim for their 1957 cover song for Richard Berry’s Louie Louie.
Immediately blowing away from the start, the song spent six weeks at number two in the US, and reached number 27 in the UK – thanks in part to the so-called obscene words that drew attention from the FBI.
The song was the basis of the band’s live performances, and it was finally recorded in Portland in 1963.
One story says the band went into the studio to cut a demo for a job on a cruise liner, another says they were invited to record it by local disc jockey Ken Chase, who thought The Kingsmen could score a “monster hit” with the song.
Controversial Lyrics
In any case, the group was unhappy with its performance, which was held live on just three microphones for $ 36 (£ 26).
Singer Jack Ely, who wore tooth braces, had to holler his vocals into a boom mike suspended from the ceiling while his bandmates played around him in a circle – making the lyrics (originally about a sailor trying to make his way home) all but incomprehensible.
But the song’s raw energy propelled it up the charts, and brought it to the attention of some concerned citizens.
One of them, the father of a teenage girl who had brought home a record, wrote to Robert Kennedy, then attorney general, complaining about what he had heard.
“The song lyrics are so dirty that I can’t put them in this letter,” he wrote. “How can we eliminate this dirt?”
His letter prompted an FBI investigation – and some of the potential lyrics included in their report are indeed eye-opening – but after several laboratory investigations, the song was declared “unintelligible at any speed” and cleared of being obscene.
For now, however, the song was banned in Indiana, and its popularity led to many sales.
“I always thought the controversy was record company hype,” Ely, who died in 2015, told Rolling Stone.
