Richard Berry: An Appreciation

We at Garagerocktopia hope that you have enjoyed the feature stories we have presented over the last several weeks. So many thanks to the Pretty Things’ Phil May, Sid Herring of the Gants and Moulty of the Barbarians for the time they spent talking to us. They didn’t have to give us the time of day (and some artists have chosen not to). They’re just very cool people who enjoy talking about their music and experiences, and thank goodness they do. It is a real pleasure to be able to talk to these folks, whose music I have enjoyed for a very long time, and hopefully I get the word out about what great tunes they did to an even bigger audience.

  

Richard Berry

Part of the raison d’etre of this blog is to give props to artists who were so influential, not only to garage rock or punk, but rock music in general, and especially those who never got the recognition they truly deserved. One of the first names we came up with here was Richard Berry.

No relation to Chuck Berry, Richard Berry was a Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter. As we’ve mentioned before, with garage rock you’re never more than a step or two away from the blues. Berry’s heyday was years before garage rock, but he has left a huge – if largely overlooked – imprint on that subgenre.

If you had to pick garage rock’s two most important songs, one almost certainly would have been “Have Love, Will Travel”; the other, perhaps more obvious choice would be “Louie, Louie” which was not written by the Kingsmen. More than just a popular, easy-to-play song, it’s a rite of passage for garage rock bands and for generations of rockers, for many the first song they could actually play. 

Both songs were written by the same man: Richard Berry.

Berry performed with several combos, including the Penguins and the Flairs. Berry’s voice became more famous than he did in 1953. He lent his bassy tones to the song “Riot on Cellblock #9.” The group that did the song, the Robins, later became the Coasters.

Also, Berry appeared opposite Etta James in her notorious 1955 hit “Dance With Me, Henry.” But Berry was an excellent composer and singer in R&B and blues, richly deserving of accolades for that body of work alone. Check songs like “Crazy Lover”  (later covered by the Rollins Band) and “Ain’t That Something.” You’ll hear that Berry was as fine an interpreter of West Coast R&B as there was.

But Berry was more than just a deep voice. He was also a more-than-able songwriter. You don’t have to take my word for it. Ask the people who have recorded well over a thousand versions of “Louie, Louie,” making it the most recorded rock and roll song ever. The Kingsmen put it on the map, but the likes of Frank Zappa, Motorhead, the Black Keys and others far too numerous to list here have kept the song alive for more than 50 years.

  

 “Louie, Louie” has quite a fascinating story, one which famed rock writer Dave Marsh wrote. We’ll give a quick thumbnail history here.

For a brief time in mid-1950’s America, before anyone knew who Fidel Castro was, there was an infatuation with music from Cuba and other Caribbean islands. Perhaps helped by Desi Arnaz’ character Ricky Ricardo on “I Love Lucy,” there was a craze for Mambo and Calypso among other kinds of music (Reggae was years away from being born). Everyone jumped on the bandwagon, from Rosemary Clooney and Dean Martin (who both had versions of “Mambo Italiano”) and Chuck Berry (“Havana Moon”).

Berry, astute observer that he was, contributed his own Caribbean-styled ditty, “Louie, Louie” which instantly got lost in the mix and was not a big hit. As was often the case with songs written by African-American performers, the song went nowhere until some white boys got their grubby little oppressor mitts on it.

All kidding aside, The Kingsmen, with a whole lot of tweaking, turned it into a hit, transforming the tropical-flavored song into one of rock’s most influential songs ever. Its release is, without question, the beginning of garage rock, and by extension, probably punk as well. Though cherubic by today’s standards, by 1963 norms, it was a raw, primitive and loud – and some might say, loutish – song. And it wasn’t simply its tonal qualities that rubbed some the wrong way.

There were also some lyrics that certain moral guardians of the day found suggestive, which to this day is a headscratcher. The FBI, apparently satisfied that crime and corruption everywhere was under complete control, spent somewhere around $100,000 tax dollars – more than $772,000 today – investigating whether the song’s lyrics were lewd. The upshot was that Berry was never even interviewed, nor were the Kingsmen, nobody was prosecuted, and the republic managed to survive intact after all.

Little Steven narrated a terrific BBC radio documentary on the investigation entitled Louie and the G-Men. It is, at the time this post is being written, not available but check this link as every so often BBC does make it available. There's also an entire Underground Garage episode devoted to the song.

If there was any crime, it was that Richard Berry, until the ’80s, received almost no money from the song. He sold the rights to the song for enough money to cover a wedding because, despite his musical accomplishments, he was broke. It should be noted that artists getting ripped off on their copyrights was a de facto business practice for the labels for quite a long time. Artists – particularly African-American artists lacked any real negotiating leverage and were more or less forced to take what the record companies offered.

It would take a rather flukey set of circumstances to turn Berry’s fortunes around. The song was slated to be part of a late-‘80s advertising campaign for a gross but inexplicably popular alcoholic beverage. Berry, who was living on welfare at the time, found himself involved in legal proceedings revolving around use of the song. Those doings happily resulted, many years and hard times later, in Berry becoming a millionaire.

Berry also wrote what has become another one of garage rock’s enduring anthems, “Have Love, Will Travel.” It was the Sonics that recorded the most familiar version in 1965, but Berry recorded it with the Pharoahs in 1959, a full-on rock and roll song.  The song may be most easily be found on the album Get Out of the Car.

This song has also been covered by the likes of the Black Keys, Lady Dottie and the Diamonds, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Tom Petty. It has also become very familiar in the United States due to its use in car commercials and promo spots.

For what it’s worth, I got to meet Richard Berry once. It was at a tribute to Willie Dixon at the Music Machine in West Los Angeles in 1986. I figure this was right about the time legal action was going on regarding the use of “Louie, Louie” in the commercial. He was very personable, but beyond a “how cool!” from me there wasn’t much of a conversation.

Oddly enough, I knew his blues and R&B work but was unaware that he wrote “Louie, Louie.” Several of the musicians performing at this tribute were not exactly what you’d call blues heavyweights. They joined Berry onstage for a jam-out on “Louie, Louie,” and at first I had no idea why he would have chosen that song, until I was informed by my friend Jerry that he was, in fact, the guy who wrote it.

Berry continued to perform for the rest of his life. In 1997 Berry passed on, not nearly as recognized as he should have been but at least given some credit – and of course, some money -- for being the performer and songwriter that he was. Some of us choose to remember Berry for all of his achievements – a long body of work that later would incorporate soul and rock. But even if he is remembered only for “Louie, Louie,” then he will be remembered and appreciated as the mastermind behind one of the most enduringly popular rock songs ever.

Our next post is truly exciting -- we'll feature the first part of a terrific conversation with Genya Ravan, who in so many ways personifies everything this blog is all about. We hope to have that up before the weekend, so check back early and often.