A-Team Mystery Version – LOUIE of the Week

This year, we start with a mystery…

A few weeks ago, I received a email from Tobias Schmahl of Germany:

I found your Blog because it is mentioned on the German Wikipedia page about “Louie Louie”.

I would like to ask for your help concerning “Louie Louie”. Do you remember the A-Team, starring George Peppard and Mr. T?

I’m going to write about that show. Maybe you know that “Louie Louie” was used in an episode of the A-Team.

It was “The Theory of Revolution” from season 5 and it aired Fri 24th Oct 1986.

(UPDATE: the previous embedded video was removed from DailyMotion)

The song was used 3 times:.
#1 – 00:11 opening of show w/ close-ups of record player + volleyball

#2 – 06:14 A-Team assembles weapons for their next strategy

#3 – 44:31 closing of show w/ close-up of collected weapons + volleyball



Now my question is: Which version of the song was used? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the Kingsmen’s recording, although it sounds similar. Do you have any idea?

I would be very grateful, if you could browse your archives (I didn’t find anything about the A-Team on your Blog).
I would be interested in any information available and every detail is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for you reply & kind regards from Germany,
Tobias Schmahl

This is an odd one. I put this question to my international team of experts, and didn’t get any definitive answers….

Theo de Grood of The Louie Louie Pages wrote:

Amazing discovery! I had the A-Team episode included in the
‘movies’-section of my website, but used the IMDB-data as a source and
never actually watched or listened to this episode myself, hence the
incorrect ‘Richard Berry‘. A Shazam-scan of the version rendered no
solution, and on this otherwise rather adequate fan-site the version is
listed as ‘Unbekannt’ (= unknown): http://www.nhl-fans.de/music.html
Probably an anonymous studio-band re-recording because of copyright
reasons?

Clay Stabler responded:

This website devoted to the music of The A-Team episodes has it by the Kingsmen which is obviously wrong.

http://www.geocities.ws/clef78uk/content/faq/faqi22.html

I’m in the same boat here – sounds vague familiar, but can’t identify it. At first I thought it might be one of the Jack Ely re-recordings, but it’s not.

Stretch Riedle also replied:

I too thought it might be a Jack Ely version. Doesn’t sound like it at all though. If its on Collectable Records then Kingsmen makes sense. But we know it’s not them.

Barry Curtis, formerly of the Kingsmen responded:

That’s not a Kingsmen recording — it sounds to me like Jack Ely and his band which he originally called The Kingsmen, but then changed it to The Courtmen. But it could be someone else. I had never heard that one before.

… and the mystery continues.

Hopefully someone that was affiliated with the TV show will emerge with the answer to this inquiry…