The Kingsmen

The Kingsmen were a Portland garage-rock band whose 1963 cover of ‘Louie Louie’ reached No. 2 and became the version burned into the public ear — famously so muddy that the FBI spent months investigating whether the lyrics were obscene, and concluded they were simply unintelligible. Their record is a genuine landmark of American rock; the only error is chronological, the assumption that a song this iconic must have started with them. It started six years earlier, with Richard Berry.