From the MCRFB NEWS Archive: 1964
The Kingsmen Hit Deemed Lyrically ‘Obscene and Suggestive’
INDIANAPOLIS — “Louie Louie” has been fingered by Indiana’s first citizen, Gov. Matthew Welsh, as being “pornographic.” The Governor, who after hearing the hit Wand recording by the Kingsmen, told people his “ears tingled.” Welsh then promptly fired off a request to Reid Chapman, president of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, requesting that the record be banned from all radio stations in the State, and Chapman, vice-president of WANE AM-AV, Fort Wayne, dutifully passed Welsh’s request on to his membership.
Reports from the capital city reveal that a high school student from Frankfort, Ind., was first to send the Governor a copy of the allegedly pornographic recording. College students from Miami University in Athens, Ohio, followed suit by providing Welsh with copies of printed “obscene lyrics.”
A spokesman at Indianapolis’ WIBC, the city’s top-rater, said that the record (this week No. 6 in the nation) was No. 4 at the station for the past two weeks, but is not currently being played.
Group W’s 50,000-watt outlet in Fort Wayne reports that the station has never played the record, but is carefully investigating all the allegations. It was learned that attempts by WOWO and other stations to capture the lyrics from the Wand waxing was nearly impossible because of the allegedly unintelligible rendition as performed by the Kingsmen.
Sources at Sceptor-Wand Records in New York flatly stated that “not in anyone’s wildest imagination are the lyrics as presented on the Wand recording in any way suggestive, let alone obscene.”
The feeling at the diskery is that a bootleg version may be the culprit.
It also seems likely that some shrewd press agentry may also he playing an important role in this teapot tempest. Exactly whose press agent is hard to pin down at this point. END
___
(Information and news source: Billboard; February 1, 1964)
