1963 Louie Louie by the Kingsman. First R&R song to be investigated by the FBI as a threat to morality.
In the winter of 1963, a team of FBI agents spent their days hunched over portable record players, struggling to decode a message that threatened the morality of America’s youth.
It wasn’t from the Russians or Castro, but a band of Portland teenagers called The Kingsmen. And the song was Louie Louie.
“J. Edgar Hoover felt we were corrupting the moral fiber of America’s youth,” Mike Mitchell, guitarist and founding member of The Kingsmen, told me in 2016. “The FBI guys came to our shows, and they’d stand next to the speakers to see if we were singing anything off-colour. It was a different time.”
How can it be a threat to morality, when no one knows what the lyrics are or even know what the song is about.
