f Jack Ely had stood closer to the microphone on the morning of April 6, 1963, when he entered a Portland studio to record a version of the song “Louie Louie,” then the history of popular music would have been different. Ely, a former vocalist of the Portland garage-rock band the Kingsmen, passed away at his home in Oregon last week. He was seventy-one years old. For five years, from 1959 to 1963, Ely sang with the Kingsmen, a group he founded with a childhood friend. The Kingsmen’s most famous recording is “Louie Louie,” a song written by Richard Berry and first recorded by Berry and his band, the Pharaohs, in 1957.
On that April day in 1963, the only microphone available to Ely was located several feet above him, hanging from the ceiling. Ely was wearing dental braces, and his bandmates, who were gathered around Ely in a circle, played their instruments loudly. The result was an incomprehensible vocal that, in time, would make Ely the most celebrated interpreter of a song which is close to being pop Esperanto. “Louie Louie” has nonetheless made brethren out of musicians as various as Black Flag, the Beach Boys, and Barry White. A, D, E minor, runs the chord progression. Easy. As for the lyrics, it doesn’t matter how you sing them, or even really what you sing, though you might consider beginning with the words “Louie Louie / Oh no / Me gotta go.” Really, though, the floor is yours. Sing your grocery list. Pull random words from a hat. “Blue eye, blue eye / Oh no / A wig on a cone,” as one version on YouTube has it.
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