When the Kingsmen covered “Louie Louie” it was peppered with errors, a curse word, and poor sound. It was not great and Herb Alpert said it was out of tune.
It wasn’t even the best version recorded that month in the studio they laid it down on. You could barely hear what the teen singer was saying. And the band broke up during the 131-week run that it was on the charts.
But as rock n’ roll would have it, the Kingsmen’s version of Richard Berry’s sea shanty song about a sailor who missed his boo would outsell all of the other versions of “Louie Louie,” which is a feat since the tune has been recorded over 2,000 times.
The Kingsmen were a band of teenagers – Don Gallucci (keys), Jack Ely (vocals), Lynn Easton (drums), Mike Mitchell (guitar), Bob Nordby (bass) – in a part of Oregon in the early ’60s that was entranced by the song.
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