My friend Hawkeye Jose Scott shared this week’s LOUIE…
At long last, my cousin’s novelty 45 from 1959 is now available!
The Strangers – Crab Louie (Christy 107)
This is certainly an interesting one, which came out two years after Richard Berry’s original LOUIE LOUIE recording in 1957.
It was originally released on the Cristy record label with the “Christy 107” catalog number…
.. as noted in Billboard magazine, February 9, 1959 as a Pop Record” on page 52…..
… and reissued in France as a part of a 4-song 7″ record on the America Records label!
The song itself doesn’t really share a lot in common with the usual LOUIE LOUIE composition, other than the name and the “Louie Louie Louie” phrase within the lyrics.
In the LOUIE community, we’ve come up with a cataloging system for defining the LOUIE Variations. Here’s three variations that we’ve come up to define these things…
LOUIE BASTARD / LOUIE CLONE – (blatant rewrite – “Farmer John,” “Beg Borow & Steal”, etc..)
LOUIE MUTANT/ RIFF SWIPE – songs that borrowed the riff -“Wild Thing,” “I Can’t Explain,” “More Than A Feeling,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” etc…
LOUIE QUOTE – songs that use LOUIE LOUIE phrases w/o actual melody- (The Cramps – “Garbage Man”)
Perhaps this song is more of a “LOUIE QUOTE,” but that doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue as well as a “LOUIE BASTARD” or a “LOUIE MUTANT”… so for lack of a better definition, we’ll just call it a LOUIE MUTANT for now…
There’s some other LOUIE Variations worth mentioning, but we’ll save that for a future blog post!
Here’s “Crab Louie” by the Strangers!
Bon Appétit!!