"Louie Louie"" investigated by FBI

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

Hoover was probably the most paranoid .....

Not only that, but his vacuum cleaners sucked too.

Sorry I couldn't resist.

[Donny Hinson]

Let's keep the topic musical, okay?

Oops! You're right Bobby...sorry for the rant. I've taken care of that.

(Would it help if I told you Hoover played banjo? )

[Ray Minich]

Rock and roll was considered a subversive movement

What did it subvert? Gregorian chant?

Probably was in conflict with the socioethnocentric special interests of that day... (new word I learned yesterday from Lou Dobbs...)

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

Rock and roll was considered a subversive movement

What did it subvert?

Actually Ray, some people in the 50s thought it was part of a communist plot to destroy America. They even thought Elvis was a communist. Seriously.

[Eric Jaeger]

I think Dave Marsh wrote an entire book on the FBI investigation of Louie Louie, and I know the Rock Bottom Remainders performed the "FBI version" (I heard them do it. Steven King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan and a bunch of other authors as a rock and roll band. With Al Kooper as a "ringer").

It's hard to imagine how much the powers that be hated and feared rock and roll when it first occurred. And the idea that the FBI would investigate the lyrics of a song seems laughable today. I will say that the FBI's lyrics say a lot about the FBI

-eric

[David Doggett]

Rock and roll was considered a subversive movement

What did it subvert? Gregorian chant?

The "primitive beat" was considered sexual, and was feared as an Africanization of puritanical white culture. It was derisively referred to as "jungle music." It was associated with juvenile delinquency and a loosening of "the moral fiber." It was also feared that it would replace the Frank Sinatra/Perry Como pop music; and Nashville was panicked that it would replace traditional country music. It took 40 years, but some would say R&R has finally replaced traditional country music in Nashville. It is a rare day that there is not a thread bemoaning this here on the Forum. The funny thing about the "commie influence" delusion was that the Soviets considered it a corrupting capitalist influence. Some things are just so good everybody hates them.

Wikipedia:
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture. It is defined as the viewpoint that “one’s own group is the center of everything,” against which all other groups are judged. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.

Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentrism of the scientist. Both urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in order to overcome their ethnocentrism. Boas developed the principle of cultural relativism and Malinowski developed the theory of functionalism as tools for developing non-ethnocentric studies of different societies. The books The Sexual Life of Savages, by Malinowski, Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict and Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (two of Boas's students) are classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology.

[Donny Hinson]

I think Dave Marsh wrote an entire book on the FBI investigation of Louie Louie...

I think Dave is a really great musicologist. Here's what he had to say about Ray Price's "Crazy Arms"

It's really impossible to remember a time when country music this traditional - that is, this Southern - still had a place within the pop spectrum. Already archaic in 1959, "Heartaches" is a C&W classic: Price's booming Texas accent floating on a sea of echo, steel guitars skidding into fiddles, and a lyric that combines dripping sentimentality, songmill gimmickry, and some real inspiration.

[Jim Cohen]

Here's what he had to say about Ray Price's "Crazy Arms"

Gee, I wonder what he'd say about 'Heartaches by the Number'?

[James Cann]

. . . they weren't anywhere near as off color as Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts who played that same circuit and had many more albums out . . .

Now here were lyrics to sing whenever you could get away with it--and we took every opportunity!

. . . and God bless the hearts of the girls of our time who endured it all!

[David Doggett]

Ah, yes...I remember well hearing Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts one night at the Deek house at Ole Miss. Um...okay, I don't remember it so well, but what I do remember is forever etched in my brain...or somewhere. I wonder if that night is in my FBI file...

[Eric Jaeger]

I think Dave is a really great musicologist. Here's what he had to say about Ray Price's "Crazy Arms"...

I admit to a real weakness for intelligent music-lit-crit stuff... Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, and the like. I may not agree with them, but there's usually something to chew on later. And the "FBI Version" of "Louie Louie" is a scream...

-eric

[Donny Hinson]

Here's what he had to say about Ray Price's "Crazy Arms"

Gee, I wonder what he'd say about 'Heartaches by the Number'?

Glad you asked, Jim! Here's what he has to say about "Heartaches By The Number"...

"Crazy Arms" must have sounded decades old the moment it was released, for Price spends the whole record on the edge of a pure Jimmie Rodgers yodel, and the fiddles and steel guitar belonmg to another era, one in which Elvis and Little Richard are barely conceivable, much less stansing at center stage.

At this point, some of you may be confused, but you just have to keep in mind that both songs are exactly the same...except for the words and music.

Dave's reviews, as well as my quoting, are interchangeable...or they can just be swapped.

[Mark Durante]

I didn't know Moon wrote Heartaches!!!

[Michael Johnstone]

What we have here is a failure to communicate.