Richard Berry

It's quite interesting.

She'd been discovered by the songwriter Richard Berry, you know, the guy who gave us Louie Louie.

or at least the original version.

He, too, would be kind of discarded in terms of fame over the years.

Royal Blunder from Seattle is a bunch of vets who came together in the last few years to give us the fantastic Only More Is Enough EP.

And they are teasing an album that I don't think is coming out until early 2027 called Today's the Day.

I got to play the second single from that today called Trapped from that Seattle-based power pop and garage rock band, The singer-guitarist, main songwriter is a guy named Robert Cochran, and he's got the hooks, man.

He's got the hooks from the four songs in that EP and the two songs so far we've heard from the forthcoming album.

There are other versions out there where the lyrics aren't so hard to understand.

Read some of the lyrics to the original version by this guy Richard Berry.

"Louie, Louie, me gotta go.

Fine little girl, she wait for me.

"Somebody somewhere came up with the idea of dirty Louis Louis lyrics, not only as a way of putting on other kids and panicking authority, but as a way of creating something that rock and roll needed, a secret as rich and ridiculous as the sounds themselves.

The teenage rumor mill spread it far and wide, and nobody who wanted to survive study hall could afford to be so unhip as to admit that there really wasn't anything at all risque to be heard."

So we may not exactly know where this rumor came from, but there has to be some theories, right? So none of this is provable, but by the mid-'80s, Richard Berry, that original songwriter of that version, did an interview, and he had this whole story about college kids in Indiana.

Here's the quote.

It was like his escape from Murray in a way so I think in 'seventy two Feeling all this stuff he was feeling he was looking for an escape Uh once again Just s-sort of thought back to Where that all happened Steve you wanted to jump in?

You touched on R&B and Um, I can hear the two different sort of sides of R&B that c-one comes from Mike which I think is sort of um, Comes from the records Johnny Otis was making or Leiber and Stoller with the Robins and the Coasters or [lip smack] What's his Mr. Louie Louie Richard Berry is that right? Who was on Stiller who was The Wallflower, the Roll With Me Henry.

Uh, Mike seems to ha- when he sings, he gets the songs with more of the blue notes in them.

And Brian can do that, but he g- he's going for this other type of ballad style that was popular in Los Angeles.

What the...

Louie Louie by Richard Berry as Covered by the Kingsmen, B, Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, C, Psychotic Reaction by the Count Five, or D, Pushin' Too Hard by the Seeds.

I'm going to say psychotic

reaction.

And that wasn't a psychotic reaction.

That was actually, it was a normal reaction.

The answer is Louie Louie by Richard Berry as covered by the Kingsmen.

Nova Selleck thought the riff was so ridiculous that Cobain forced the band to play it repeatedly for over an hour and a half before they finally slowed it down and found the groove to make it sound enough.

You don't know music, but it's...

Richard Berry is who you're thinking of.

Yes.

Okay.

So it was really just sloppy music.

There was nothing to find.

Richard Berry said the lyrics were actually wholesome.

It's a simple story about a sailor telling a bartender named Louie how much he misses his girlfriend.

I think we played for free.

We looked out at that audience and here were all these beautiful Jamaicans just transported while a bunch of young kids from North Toronto were singing Louis Louis, which was kind of like, Calypso music when it was first conceived by Richard Berry.

Richard Berry wrote Louis Luai and it wasn't a hit for him.

Years later, Richard Berry comes to Alberts Hall atop the Brunswick House in Toronto, another venue that's no longer Gone.

I mean, it's gone.

Another venue that no longer survives.

We saw Etta James there.

Peter Appleyard held court there.