Today, in celebration of International LOUIE LOUIE Day, we’re sharing a very special recording of LOUIE LOUIE by Jim Phelps & the Clandestones that had a special world premiere at the 1984 LOUIE marathon that took place at KALX Radio in Berkeley, California.
Last year, I was fortunate to receive some of the aircheck master recordings from the Amazing Mystery DJ (aka Mel Chelpowitz), and this is the first of what should be many more rarities from this legendary Berkeley radio station.
As some of you may or may not know, KALX Radio had a friendly rivalry with KFJC Radio of Los Altos Hills. At one point, there was an attempt in the San Francisco Bay Area to see if one station could outdo each other in terms of sharing different variations of the song, but after KFJC hosted a 63 hour event that spanned over the course of 4 days with 800 unique versions, it became something of a moot point.
That being said, I applaud the efforts of the Amazing Mystery DJ, who continued to host even more LOUIE specials at KALX Radio, including this one that took place one year after KFJC’s Maximum LOUIE LOUIE event.
Gary Hobish of Armin Hammer Productions was responsible for this inspired recording, which is known as the “IMF version” of the song.
This video was assembled with the help of various public domain films originally produced by the legendary filmmaker Jam Handy, whose work can be found at archive.org.
NOTE: The contact information listed on the original cassette is no longer valid, so please do not pester whoever shares this address and/or phone numbers.
UPDATE:
Gary Hobish provided more details about this one:
“Louie Louie (IMF Version)” is a mashup of LL & Lalo Schifrin‘s Mission Impossible theme, recorded in May 1984 at Fantasy Recording Studios back when I was on staff there. It features local jazz great Jennifer Clevinger (piano), Kirk Felton on drums, bongoes and matches, myself on bass, and that’s Jennifer, me and Martin Clevinger (inventor of the Clevinger electric solid body upright bass) on vocals.
Thanks Eric Predoehl for digging this one out of the archives!