LOSING THE CULTURE WARS The Myth of Louie Louie.

I believe Matt Welsh when he insisted years later he thought the "whole thing was a tempest in a teapot..." But honestly, that might be just the way he remembered January of 1964, not the way he lived it.  Because when the letter from the small town of Frankfurt, promoting a conspiracy theory, landed on the desk of the 41st Governor of Indiana, Matt Welsh wasted no time in spreading it as far and as fast as possible. That's what most politicians do. They spread panic.  It's almost their job description.  Shouldn't be, but it is.

Frankfurt (above), a town of 15,000 exclusively white citizens, 45 miles due north of Indianapolis, was very much in the news that January of 1964 because of the Hoosier obsession with high school basketball. 

 On Saturday, 28 December, 1963, Frankfort High School (above) had hosted a holiday invitational tournament in their new $4.5 million basketball arena (above right). The Frankfort "Hot Dogs" were eliminated in the afternoon game. That evening the team from Anderson, Indiana, met the reigning state champs, the Muncie Central High School Bearcats in what Indianapolis News sports writer, Corwin "Corky" Lamm,  described as "A Basketbrawl".

During the final seconds of Anderson's upset win, a frustrated Muncie player slammed the ball into his opponent's face. The sight of blood emptied the bleachers. Players and fans went at each other with their fists. Somebody even punched an Anderson cheerleader into the bleachers. Frankfort police quickly got things under control, but according to Lamm, the principle causality was  "... one black eye for basketball". At the core of the hysteria which followed, but which was barely mentioned in the press, was that while the entire Anderson team was white, 3 of the 5 starters for Muncie Central (below) were African-Americans.

Interestingly, this seismic headline and editorial producing event was not mentioned in the perfidy letter to Governor Welsh, even though the letter was written less than 3 weeks later, and the author attended Frankfort High School, infamous scene of the "basketbrawl". Rather the writer of the letter postmarked 17 January, 1964 professed to be concerned only with an immoral musical machination which began 8 months earlier, and 1,500 miles away.

At about 10:00 a.m., on Saturday, 6 April, 1963, the 5 members of the rock and roll group The Kingsmen gathered in a recording studio at 411 Southwest 13th Street in Portland, Oregon. 

The local group had been playing together for about 2 years, with 18 year old Jack Ely  (above left) singing through his new dental braces and playing rhythm guitar. Mike Mitchel (above right front) played lead guitar, Dan Gallucci was on the organ, Bob Norby (above right rear) was on bass guitar and the group's founder, Lynn Easton, reluctantly played the drums. They had pooled their funds to pay the $36 fee for a 1 hour use of the equipment and a recording technician, because they were proud of their rock-and-roll rendition of a calypso song written by a Los Angles musician named Richard Barry - who no longer owned the song, having sold all rights 3 years earlier for $750.

Backstage during a show in 1957, Barry had quickly scribbled the lyrics to a easy going R&B love ballad he called "Louie Louie" - no comma between the names - on a roll of toilet paper. Seriously. The song told the story in Jamaican English of a young man forced to leave home to find work. "A fine little girl, she waits for me, catch a ship across the sea, Sail that ship about, all alone, Never know if I make it home...3 nights and days I sail the sea, Think of girl, all constantly....See, see Jamaica, the moon above, It won't be long, me see me love, Take her in my arms again, I'll tell her I'll never leave again"

The Portland studio mostly recorded voice-overs for commercials and documentaries. and had never recorded a rock band before. The Kingsmen formed a circle around Jack Ely, one microphone for each instrument's amplifier and a single mic suspended from the ceiling for the vocal - this was before multi-track recording. 

After playing "10 or 12 bars" to set sound levels the technician and studio owner Robert Lindahl (above), moved Jack "about 10 feet back" and then they "laid down" a single 2 minute 40 second version of the song. The band thought they were still rehearsing. Ely was yelling to be heard above the amplifiers and drums, and he started the last verse too early. Half way through the song, Easton dropped a stick. But at the end Lindahl announced, "Great! Wonderful! What do you want to put on the B side?"

According to Ely, "We pressed 1,000 copies. The five of us got 20 each to pass out at school...The rest went into distribution, and nothing happened for months." But the slowly growing sales so impressed New York based "Wand Records" they signed on to distribute  the recording.  But Wand, as part of the racist division in American music at the time, handled almost exclusively African-American artists. And as guitarist Mike Mitchel explained, "They had no idea we were white. By the time they found out...the song was climbing up the Billboard chart." In fact the Kingsmen's one take version of "Louie Louie" sold 12 million copies. When they later released it as part of an album, the cover did not include a photo of the band.  For obvious reasons.

What the recording had was energy and spontaneity. What it did not have was enunciation. Teenage musicians across the country listened to the popular record over and over, copying the music, but the more they listened, the more versions of the lyrics they came up with. According to Mitchel, "Some students at Tulane University called Lynn's house one afternoon and said, 'We've heard the record and these are the words we hear. Is it true?' And then they sang some dirty lyrics. That was the first time we learned that some people thought the lyrics were obscene because, in the northwest, it was a well-known song that had been played by many groups."

But nobody in Frankfort, Indiana (above) had ever heard the song before, lest of all the student who signed the letter to Governor Welsh. But he or she was certain the lyrics they were hearing were  "so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter. ” However, students at Miami University in Athens, Ohio produced an obscene version of the lyrics, which compelled Jack New, Governor Welsh's executive secretary, to obtain a copy of the record - thus increasing sales by one more. According to Welsh "We slowed it down and we thought we could hear the words." At the time Welsh had no doubts, saying the supposed lyrics made his ears tingle. The Governor's Press Secretary, James McManus, assured the Indianapolis Star, the obscenities were "indistinct, but plain if you listen carefully."

But Governor Welsh (above)  did not bother to contact anyone at Wand Records, or even the band members in Portland, Oregon - whose families were available by dialing directory assistance. Instead Governor Welsh sent a letter off to his "friend", President of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, Ried Chapman (below).

Later Welsh insisted, "At no time did I ever pressure anybody to take the song off the air. I suggested...it might be simpler all around if it wasn't played." Fine distinction. Eager to help his friend, Chapman dispatched telegrams to stations statewide "asking" them to not play the record. 

Overnight "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen (above)went from the 4th most played song on Indianapolis radio, to zero. A few days later the Indianapolis Star called Portland and reported,"Young Singers Dismiss As Hooey Obscenity Charge in 'Louie Louie.'" Lynn Easton was quoted as saying, "We took the words from the original version by Richard Berry and recorded them faithfully. There was no clowning around. " 

But the editorial board of The Star refused to let go of the conspiracy, denouncing "...some stations" which have "decided to fill their programs with a cacophony of noise, and a collection of musical garbage. Call it what you like--folk music, rock 'n' roll, bop, hip or what-not." The paper offered no suggestion as to who should decide what was music and what was garbage, but the implication was clear, the Indianapolis Star knew the difference, and it was that " Negro Music" was garbage. 

Two Marion County prosecutors were assigned to investigate the dirty record. They played it at the standard 45 revolutions per minute, sped it up to 78 and slowed it down to 33 and a third. Their assessment was "the record is an abomination of out-of-tune guitars, an overbearing jungle rhythm and clanging cymbals."  Jungle rhythm sort of says it all, doesn't it? But it was not obscene. Surprisingly the 1 February edition of "Billboard, The International Music - Record Newsweekly", endorsed their own cabal - "...some shrewd press agent may also be playing an important role in this teapot tempest. Exactly whose agent is hard to pin down at this point."Hard because there wasn't one, because it wasn't about obcentity, it was about race, it was about "jungle music". Nobody said it, but  that was what it was about.

That January the United States Attorney General, Robert Kennedy got an almost identical letter, originating from the parent of a student attending Sarasota High School in Florida. "...My daughter brought home a record of "LOUIE LOUIE"... The lyrics are so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter." Fifty years later it is reasonable to suspect an organized movement to suppress the "jungle rhythm". 

But in January of 1964, Attorney General Robert Kennedy did what Governor Welsh should have done first. Kennedy ordered the F.B.I to investigate. At the same time the U.S. Post Office and the Federal Communications Commission also launched investigations. 

As the Associated Press reported, "All three agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics were even after listening to the recordings played at speeds of 16 rpm to 78 rpm."

The foolishness of the entire matter was made plain when on 1 February -  the same day as the Billboard article about the supposed "Louie Louis" conspiracy - announced that the  song "I Want To Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles hit number one on the charts. It would stay there  for 7 weeks. 

The "45 "single record of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" sold 10,000 copies an hour in New York city alone. Nationwide it sold 5 million copies that spring. And it was replaced for another 2 weeks at the top of the Billboard chart by "She Loves You", also by the Beatles. It was the beginning of the British invasion, and the reign of the "Fab Four".  The Kingsman's "Louie Louie" was the last American record to top the charts for months. 

Frankfort, Indiana won no advantage in being the source de main for the "Louie Louie" conspiracy theory.  Nor did it gain any advantage from the press coverage of the "Basketbrawl"  These events, which seemed so important to community leaders in 1964,  gained the town nothing. In the forty plus years since the 15,000 residents of "Gem City" -  so called because of its early investment in electrical lighting, - grew to a town of about 16,000 people. 

There are still almost no African-Americans in Frankfort. But the population is now only 72% white, with Hispanics making up 27%.  And 11% of all of those mostly whites live in poverty. Winning the Culture Wars in Frankfort may not be the cause of its failure to grow and prosper,  but clearly racism and fear has not helped the town. As the clearly enunciated clearly not obscene lyrics to the Frankfort High School fight song say, "All hail to dear old Frankfort, to the blue and the white that floats upon the breeze....may her glory never, never die."  But there are times when it looks like the town just might.  And the biggest obstacles it has to overcome are the twin obscenities of ignorance and racism. But for God's sake, don't talk about it.

- 30 -

WHAT'S EATING YOU

I wonder if Superman ever has a creepy crawly moment, just before he steps into the shower maybe, when out of the corner of his X-Ray Super vision he notices a bunch of little buggies crawling over his skin. Of course his skin is "super" and never wears out, meaning he does not support a menagerie of livestock, grazing on his desiccated flesh, like we humans do. And I've got to say, that makes Superman a little less Super. To me.  Because compared to your personal zoo of Dematophagoisdes pternyssinus, AKA the Mighty Dusts Mite (actually some sperate 15 species) grazing on your body at this very moment like vast microscopic herds of minuscule buffalo, Super Villains are a minor annoyance.

Feel the sudden urge to scratch? Don’t bother; scratching just creates tiny Alps of dead skin for these buggies to feast upon. The truth is we don’t merely live on this planet; this planet also lives on us. Louis Pasture had it right; even fleas have fleas. And so do we, and so do our fleas and so do the fleas starving on the desert that must be the empty plains of Superman's flesh.

Despite their small size (three of them could fit in the period at the end of a sentence and about 42,000 of them live in every once of dust) these driven little arthropods have a massive impact, because the Dust Mite does not eat dust – ah, would that dusting had such a dedicated helpmate. Rather they feast on the 50 million flakes (about 1 ½ grams) of skin which we shed each and every day.  About 80 % of the “dust” you can see floating in a beam of sunlight is your own dead skin, and fodder for these microscopic herbivores. These are the bugs that give spiders the heeby-jeebies!

Our mighty mite companions also enjoy munching on hair, pollen grains, fungal spores and bacteria, as well as cigarette ash and tobacco, clothing fibers, fingernail clippings and filings, food crumbs, glue, insect parts, paint chips, salt and sugar crystals and even graphite; in short everything and anything we are, use or touch, they eat and regurgitate and re-eat and re-regurgitate, etc., etc. (Dust mites, you see, are so small they  have no digestive tracts).

When you sleep (we spend about 1/3 of our lives in bed) your body and bedding is transformed into an Acaroliocal Park (acarology being the study of dust mites) which makes Michael Crichton’s "Jurassic Park" look like it had been stepped on by an Apatasaurous.  As much as half the weight in your ten year old mattress could be the 10 million mites who live there and depend on you for their dinner each time you lay you down and go to sleep. Mites don’t like sunlight and they love high humidity, meaning when you climb into bed tonight they will be there to welcome you, waiting for you to exhale and pull the covers up.

They also love rugs and carpets, dusty bookshelves and dusty books and nooks and crannies on fabric covered furniture. And they are completely harmless – except that their poop and their desiccated corpses are a source of human allergies and likely one of the primary a causes of asthma. During a female mite’s lifetime of 3 to 4 weeks she can produce 200 times her own weight in mighty pop and leave 300 cream colored mighty mite eggs, all capable of taking your breath away. A dehumidifier helps with the allergies (dust mite populations drop at anything below 50% humidity) and regular vacuuming can help keep their populations under control. But there are studies showing that carpet or mattress shampooing or even using a Hepafilter on your vacuum cleaner merely increases the resident population because it moistens it and scatters it. 

These tiny bugs have evolved so closely with us that there are no conditions or chemicals that will kill them without doing the same thing to us. So basically, the best we can hope for in our war with dust mites is a draw, because the world of the dust mite is a familiar yet strange place where air behaves more like water and a each human hair supports an isolated ethos.

And as every Ying has its Yang, and every Superman has his Bizzaro Superman, the herbivore dust mite has engendered the family Cheyletidae, the micro-predatory dust mite, which can be 6 – 8% of the total mighty mite population. These minuscule lions and tigers and bears stalk their prey every night, even migrating with them onto and off your body, unseen and largely un-felt, pouncing with vicious crushing microscopic jaws. They are no less heartless for their lack of a heart. Some digest their food inside its own shell (something to think about the next time you eat crab) by injecting masticating juices, and some of these tiny predators even consume the shell, reducing their meals to a tiny pile of mush before consuming it. And then regurgitating and re-eating it.  

It even seems that our current  mighty mites are the survivors of a once more varied population of “guest workers”, as was attested to by the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, just before vespers on 29 December, 1170. Once you get over the the whole subject of the power of the Church versus the power of the State, the story of Becket's death becomes much smaller and larger - at the same time.  Because something amazing happened to the Archbishop’s fresh corpse, as described in Hans Zinsser’s 1935 epic book, “Rats, Lice and History”, beginning with Zinsser’s description of the dead Archbishop’s robes of office. 

When he was murdered Becket was wearing, “…a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, …robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen.”  These were all natural fibers, you see.

As Becket’s corpse grew cold the successive layers of robes also cooled, and all the little creatures that had been living within the folds and pleats started looking for a new home. Wave after wave of various fleas, ticks, spiders, pincher bugs, and other creatures flowed out from the corpse, “…like water in a simmering cauldron” producing in the hushed mourners gathered in the dim cathedral, “…alternate weeping and laughter…’”. Those Saxons; they sure knew humor when they saw it, skittering across the blood stained marble floor. And the unseen mites must have been far more numerous and just as desperate to find their meal ticket suddenly giving then the cold shoulder.

 Not only did the dead Becket popularize the hair shirt, but his corpse offered an abject lesson in the realty of life before the invention of the water heater. Without easy access to warm water people tended not to bathe. And that made them much more intimate with their pests and parasites than we of the hygienic era. But despite our best efforts we still live with the mighty Dust Mite. In fact, if you listen very carefully, you can probably hear them marching across your flesh right now, and everything you touch during an average day, looking for a snack.

Sleep tight, and just let the dust mites bite. And bon appetit for you both.

- 30 -

THE PIXIE TRAMP And the Real Man in the Iron Mask

I have some shocking news for you. The man in the Iron Mask was not Leonardo DiCaprio. And anyway, he didn’t wear an iron mask. I mean, just think this thing through. Wearing an iron mask, all the time,  eventually you will drool in your sleep, and end up rusted shut.

It was a cloth  mask. And he was not the twin of King Louis XIV or any other Louie. Who he was seems to have been mixed up in what is called “The Affair of the Poisons” which is a morality tale of a cute little love-sick tramp with the affinity for “inheritance powders”, and her amoral boyfriend.

Throw in the King’s mistress for a little spice, and you have a recipe for what Alexis de Tocqueville called “L’Ancien Regime”, and what in modern terms we would call a soap opera of the rich and infamous. It leaves me wondering why the French waited so long to start chopping off heads.

We begin in 1659, with a little tramp named Marie Madeleine Margherite D’Aubray Brinvillers. We’ll call her Maire for short. I don’t think she’ll mind. Marie was a tiny pixie-doll of a woman with sparkling blue eyes who seems to have committed no major public sins until she was about thirty.

That was when her husband (above) introduced her to a handsome cavalryman named Godin de Sainte-Croix, to whom the husband owed a whole bunch of gambling debts. Hubby had to move out of the country to avoid his other creditors, but he left Marie behind,  as a sort of payment on account for Sainte-Croix. Marie didn’t seem to mind the arrangement, and neither did Sainte-Croix. Except, as much fun as Sainte-Croix had with little Marie, she wasn’t making him any richer. Where, oh, where was Sainte-Croix going to find enough money to live in the style to which he wanted to grow accustomed to?

Sainte-Croix then developed a multi-step plan. Step one was to encourage Marie to do some charity work. Step two was for Sainte-Croix to make the acquaintance of a man with a knowledge of chemistry, a man known only to history by the name of “Auguer”.

Now, in the days before CSI the only way to prove poisoning - as opposed to just an unhygienic cook - was to catch the suspect pouring poison on the food, or to get him or her to confess.

This is why torture was so popular for so long. It never failed. No matter whom you arrested, ten minutes with the prisoner's testicles caught in a vice, and you could get them to admit anything.

Of course, if your suspect was too connected to be tortured, the only alternative was to lock him up while you slowly collected evidence. That might take decades. And during that time witnesses could be bought off, killed off, or just die of natural causes. Politicians could retire. Investigators could get promoted, or fired, or die of old age. Or be poisoned. People dropped dead all the time in 17th century France. The staggering death toll made for the convoluted plots of some very popular French novels and plays.

So when poor people started dropping dead at the hospital where Marie had volunteered as a nurse, nobody took notice. They were poor people. In 17th century France the streets were littered with dead poor people. It was the perfect time and place for a serial killer, such as cute little Marie.

When Marie had perfected the formula she had gotten from Sainte-Croix, which she had by 1666, she had no compunction about slipping the poison into her father’s lunch. He died suddenly. And his little darling inherited a little money, which she and Saint-Croix burned through in four short years.

Then in 1670 Marie shed more tears when her two brothers suddenly dropped dead. Marie inherited a little more money. By now, all the heirs in the Brinvillers family were getting nervous. But still nobody suspected the little elf, the little pixie, Marie Brinvillers. She was too cute. Cute people can’t be serial murderers.

And just when the homicidal little pixie was about to knock off her own mother for yet another load of cash, Gordin Sainte-Croix, the greedy mastermind of the entire slaughter, unexpectedly fell ill and dropped dead himself. Mon Dieu! Cele semble suspecte?!

The cops were brought in. They uncovered a hand written confession by Sainte-Croix  Why do upper crust murderers always seem to feel the need to become authors?  And it seems Sainte- Croix even left a list of names of his satisfied customers, everyone he had directed to the mysterious chemist, Msr. Auger.

The list of lucky orphans included Madame de Montespan, who was Louis XIV’s mistress – which in pre-revolutionary France was almost a cabinet position - and the Duchesse of Orleans, Louis’s sister-in-law (above), and...Marie Brinville.  Marie panicked. The cops were not going to torture the King’s mistress, or his sister-in-law, but they would have no hesitation about putting a lower level nobility like cutie like Marie on the rack. She ran off to seek protection with her husband in exile. But she was now infamous and hubby decided it was better if he had nothing to do with her. So Marie signed herself into a convent in Liege, Belgium.

This placed the pious nuns running the convent in a moral bind. They were sworn to provide sanctuary to all who asked for it and who sought forgiveness by confessing their sins, but...on the other hand, once you know what a homicidal lunatic little Marie was, how do you solve a problem like Marie? How do you catch a serial killer and pin her down? How do you keep your convent running when you are short of money? The good sisters consulted scripture and their account books and after due deliberations decided to rat out their diminutive guest.

The nuns allowed a cop disguised as a priest to enter the convent, and while offering solace to the troubled little lady, he escorted Marie on a walk, right out the front gate and off church property, where she was immediately arrested.

It is not a happy ending for our little heroine. Marie was brought back to Paris in chains, tortured for a confession (i.e. waterboarded), tried in secret, and on 16 July, 1676 she was forced to drink eight pints of water (more waterboarding)… and then mercifully she was beheaded. And just to be sure, they burned her corpse. And that is how you solve a problem like Marie.

It looked like all hell was about to break loose in France. The cops now had Marie's confession and Sainte-Croix's list, both naming lots and lots of well known and well connected nobility. But just before the case broke wide open...Louis XIV (above) ordered all further investigations to be closed. And being the King, his orders were obeyed. He shut it all down. Can't imagine an American President behaving like that. Can you?  Nobody ever asked Madame Montespan or the Duchesse of Orleans how their names came to be on a list of people who had bought “inheritance powders”. Or if they had ever used them.

And shutting down the investigation also left unanswered another set of unpleasant questions: who was Msr. Auger, really? And what did he know? And more importantly, did he have any plans to write his biography or maybe a 'how to' book?  Was he the man in the Iron Mask? And what does any of this have to do with Leonardo DiCaprio?

Nothing: like I said, the “Man in the Iron Mask” was really the “Man in the cloth  Mask” and cloth  just sounds too fey for a novel plot. And in any case, the Auger was not the guy in the mask - I don't think. But if you are of a novel mind set you might ask yourself a few additional questions.

Like, why would the King of France keep someone locked up in one prison after another -for decades? Why not just kill him and get it over with? And what secret could be so big that the prisoner was required to wear a mask at all times in front of strangers? What secret could be kept secure by ordering a prisoner to never speak to anyone, not even with his jailers? Could such a convoluted plan even hope to work? James Bond villains have simpler plans than that.  If you ask me this story is mostly a fantasy invented by Alexander Dumas.  But was not the truth just as entertaining as the myth?  Not to Marie's relatives, of course, but it was for me. Was it good for you?

- 30 -