Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner Longview musician-turned-lawyer Joe Daggy will be on e of 1,000 guitarists participating in a 'Louie Louie' concert in Tacoma on Sunday. |
One Note in a Thousand
Thursday, August 21, 2003 8:52 AM PDT
By Tom Paulu
Printable version
E-mail this articleWhy has "Louie Louie" become the Northwest's rock anthem and, some would argue, the most famous pop tune of all time?
Just ask Joe Daggy.
"It's easy to play," replied the rock bass player and Longview attorney, rattling off reasons as quickly as a 45 rpm record spins.
"It's one of the first songs you learn in a band."
"You can play it with one finger or learn the whole chord."
"You can't get the words wrong -- sing anything you want."
Though Daggy hasn't played professionally for a couple of decades, he can quickly pluck out the all-so-familiar "Louie Louie" riff: Bum-bum bum-bum-bum, bum-bum bum-bum-bum.
He won't have any trouble blending in when 1,000 musicians gather in Tacoma Sunday for what is planned as a "Louie Louie" gig of historic significance.
Organizers hope to get into the Guinness Book of World Records while raising money for music education in teh Puget Sound area.
Daggy, 53, was getting into rock and roll as a Kelso High school student at the height of Louie-dom.
"I think we maybe played it 100 times the first year we tried to put a band together."
In 1968, after stints in bands called The Commoners and The Dirty Young Men, he joined a Woodland band called Brougham Closet (pronounced "broom closet"), which reportedly was a huge hit at the Planter's Day festival that summer.
Daggy said the Closet cleaned up its act in a hurry. "A real milestone for a garage band is when neighbors stop calling the police" and actually want to hear you play, he said.
The Closet performed at dances from Longview to Newport, Ore.
"There were so much quality of music when I was doing this in the '60s," Daggy said, with dance halls from Portland to Puget Island hiring live bands.
"Louie Louie" was one of the three must-plays of every evening, Daggy said, along with "Proud Mary" and "Joy to the World" --- the one that starts "Jeremiah was a bullfrog ... "
At Merwin Dam, "Two of the Kingsmen showed up at one of our dances and wanted to sit in, but they were drunk and we wouldn't let them," Daggy recalled. "We were afraid they'd wreck our instruments."
The Brougham Closet, which also included Mike Knight, Gary Carter and Leon Richey, traveled to Los Angeles three times to be on Paul Revere's TV show. Daggy remembers sitting next to Mark Lindsay, the original Paul Revere lead singer, when everyone stopped recording to watch the lunar landing on TV.
The band was good enough that Daggy considered a career as a musician.
"It could have happened, but I always wanted to get a real job. I always looked at it as temporary." He left the band to go to the University of Washington, where he played in Albatross and The Bill Grant Trio, which was actually a quartet.
After attending Willamette University law school, Daggy passed up a job offer with the Seattle city attorney and returned to his home town to practice law. He now specializes in business and real estate cases.
"There's a real creative side to law," Daggy said. "You have to figure out what's going on."
He's kept his fingers in the creative arts, however. Daggy has made short films for KLTV, including one about the Nutty Narrows Bridge, and was an assistant director for "The Immigrant Garden," the locally shot film based on a story by Longview author Caroline Wood. He continues to do video work with Tad Devlin, the producer of "Immigrant Garden."
And he publishes the Sandbagger News, a monthly e-magazine that sometimes covers the local group of pranksters of that name, of which Daggy is an enthusiatic member.
The e-mag is "freqently quite inaccurate -- by design," Daggy revealed.
The latest edition included several articles about .... a certain Joe Daggy and his past and future guitar feats.
Recently, Daggy ran into the artist formerly known as Kirk Morton, a band-mate from Brougham Closet he hadn't seen in 20 years. Morton, now called Hank Rasco, went on to fame in The Wasted Rangers. He told Daggy about the upcoming Louie extravaganza.
Daggy dusted off his bass and memories of his rock-and-roll days.
They're still fresh, even if a new generation of "Louie Louie" fans has come along
Daggy and his 16-year-old son, Adam, recently saw humorist Dave Barry in Tacoma, and Adam was invited up on stage to sing along on "Louie Louie."
By the time it was Adam's turn, it was the third verse. "Adam sang it and Barry's jaw dropped. Nobody knows those words," Daggy said, "He apparently learned them from listening to Beach Boys tapes."
In further proof the the malleability of the song once considered obscene, Barry did his own version of "Louie Louie."
"He did it slow. It sounded like 'Kum-Ba-Yah.' "
If You Go
More than 1,000 guitarists are expected to play "Louie Louie" Sunday at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. The group hopes to set a Guinness Book world record.
The Wailers and Kingsmen, who originated the hits in the Northwest, will perform.
Doors open at 10 a.m. and event goes until 9:30 p.m., with three stages featuring regional music performances.
Tickets cost $15 in advance through Ticketmaster outlets or $20 at the gate.
The event is sponsored by the Wailers Performing Arts Foundation in cooperation with the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Sound, with proceeds going to music education.
www.1000guitars.org
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