Louie Louie: Don't judge a song by its cover

Described as the most subversive track in rock'n'roll history, 'Louie Louie' has been covered by everyone from Otis Redding to Iggy Pop. So, asks Phil Johnson, what exactly is its attraction?

Duh duh duh, duh duh: it's the dumbest musical phrase in pop history and also the most perfect. Born out of the mixed-race marriage of Los Angeles rhythm and blues and Afro-Cuban cha-cha-cha, the concatenation of those five, even-measured, notes, together with a doo-wop vocal chorus, created a whole new sound: rock'n'roll with a Latin clave beat. The result was sex on legs. Wobbly legs. In later versions, the greasy-kid-stuff vocals were delivered with such a studied air of dumb insolence that they helped to inspire punk rock, Johnny Rotten's sneer and the sulky porn-star pout of David Johansen of the New York Dolls. And we haven't even considered the words yet; the cod-Jamaican, supposedly obscene words. So let the tip of the tongue take a trip down the palate to spell out that immortal mantra: "Louie Louie, me gotta go". To which – after the optional "yeah"s – there's only one response. That's right: duh duh duh, duh duh.

"Louie Louie" has been skulking in the background of history ever since the original version by the song's author, Richard Berry, in 1957. It was there at the births of garage punk, heavy metal and punk rock, rocking on its heels and looking bored. There are umpteen versions, from Mexican mariachi to MOR to marching band, an excellent book by Dave Marsh, a website, and a "work-in-progress" documentary film. But never before has "Louie Louie" – or any pop song – received such loving treatment as that meted out by a new album. Love That Louie: The Louie Louie Files, not only brings together all the significant, pre-1970, incarnations of the song but also searches out the primary sources and antecedents.

Minimalists should also note that once you own Love That Louie, which includes versions by the Beach Boys, Otis Redding, the Kinks, the Sandpipers and Sounds Orchestral, as well as numerous crazed-sounding proto-punks – you don't really need any other pop records. To complete the package, an obsessively researched essay tells the story of the song brilliantly. It's quite a tale, too, replete with mystery, obscenity, moral panic, and cameo appearances by the FBI and the Mafia.

The story begins at the Harmony Park ballroom in Anaheim, California in the summer of 1956. Twenty-one-year-old Richard Berry, a well-known singer on the local LA rhythm and blues scene, was guesting with the Rhythm Rockers, a band led by two Filipino-American brothers from Orange County, Bobby and Barry Rillera. As Berry sat out the early part of the band's set, he became aware of an insistent rhythmic thump coming through the dressing room wall. Cocking an ear to listen more closely, the thump spoke to him. It said: "Duh duh duh, duh duh". Picking up a pencil and a paper bag, Berry wrote down an idea for a song. When he asked the Rilleras to name that thump, "the one with the great piano and drums intro", they told him it was their version of "El Loco Cha Cha" by bandleader Rene Touzel. The next morning, Berry went out and bought the record.

Except for the intro, "El Loco Cha Cha" isn't much like "Louie Louie". To develop his idea, Berry had to borrow further elements from at least three other songs. The easiest to identify is Chuck Berry's "Havana Moon", a 1956 B-side (itself based on Nat King Cole's "Calypso Blues" from 1948), whose narrative structure and Caribbean dialect ("Me sip on de rum") were lifted more or less intact. Berry's next "homage" was the masterstroke, however. From Johnny Mercer's "One for my Baby (And One More for the Road)", a classic nighthawk's bar-room lament he took the device of a narrator addressing the lyrics to a bartender, the Louie of the title.

In classic R&B fashion, Berry sold his copyright in the song soon after he wrote it for one cash payment of $750, in order to get married. "Louie Louie" by Richard Berry and the Pharaohs was released as the B-side of "You Are My Sunshine" on Flip Records in April 1957. Berry had envisaged a full Latin version, with timbales and congas, but label owner Max Feirtag disagreed. "We don't want that crap. We want a good R&B-sounding record," Berry remembered Feirtag saying. When radio DJs started playing the B-side, the single was "flipped" and became a West Coast hit before it withered and died.

Or at least it would have died, but for the intervention of various, more or less mysterious, factors, which four years later led to "Louie Louie" becoming an unlikely staple of the emerging garage-band repertoire in the Pacific Northwest. In ballrooms in Seattle and Portland, the song gained such a following that groups had to play it several times in every set. As recorded by Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers in 1961, and by the Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1963, the song lost Berry's Latin doo-wop roots to become a tough, knee-trembling, rocker.

The controversy over the supposedly obscene lyrics came about after the Kingsmen's version made the charts and a rumour started that singer Jack Ely – whose problems with diction were probably due to the braces on his teeth and poor microphone placement – was singing dirty words, which could be heard if the 45rpm single was played at 33rpm. Soon, kids all over America were passing notes containing what purported to be the "real" lyrics. After complaints from parents, an FBI investigation began that was to last for two-and-a-half years before reaching the alleged conclusion that "Louie Louie" was "unintelligible at any speed". The FBI even interviewed Berry, who maintained his song to be "the lament of a seafaring man, spoken to a sympathetic bartender named Louie". So, the most subversive song in rock'n'roll turns out to be a sea shanty.

You can hear a "dirty" "Louie Louie" in the 1978 film Animal House. A far more powerful example, and one that sadly isn't on Love That Louie, is that by Iggy Pop and the Stooges on Metallic KO, a live recording of their infamous last-ever gig at the Michigan Ballroom in Detroit. As eggs, lightbulbs and bottles rain on to the stage, Iggy rewards the audience with a 55-minute version of "Louie Louie", singing the rude words he probably learnt in the back of the school bus 10 years earlier.Love That Louie prefers a more positive conclusion, completing the song's mythic journey by taking "Louie Louie" to Jamaica, with a terrific reggae version by Toots and the Maytals. As to why the song has proved so popular the compiler, Alec Palao, is adamant: "It's incredibly simple to play." Duh.

'Love That Louie: The Louie Louie Files' is out now on Ace Records