Unintelligible – and unsafe – at any speed...

It’s just plain odd that the classic rock song “Louie Louie” and Ralph Nader are connected by both a quote and a date. But it’s true.

“Louie Louie” was written in 1955 by the pioneering American R&B singer and songwriter Richard Berry (1935-1997).

In a nod to the popularity Calypso music was enjoying in the mid-1950s, Berry gave “Louie Louie” a Caribbean flavor by writing the lyrics in an island-style patois.

It’s basically a love song. A Jamaican sailor tells some other guy named Louie that he’s been missing his “fine little girl.” He can’t wait to sail home, take her in his arms and tell her “I never leave again.” Which is why he says “Louie Louie, me gotta go.” (As in, go home.)

Berry recorded “Louie Louie” with his group the Pharaohs in 1957. Their version was a modest regional hit in the Northwest, where it became a favorite party song of local rock music bands.

One of those bands was a group of white kids from Portland, Oregon who called themselves The Kingsmen. They made a raucous, poorly-recorded version of the song in 1963.

It was released in May and entered Billboard’s Top 40 singles chart on November 30, 1963.

The fuzziness of the recording and the garbled attempt at Jamaican patois by The Kingsmen’s lead singer, Jack Ely, made the lyrics notoriously hard to understand. But their catchy cover version was a huge hit, selling over a million copies.

By 1964, the song was gleefully being sung by teenagers and rock bands nationwide, using many variations of the words.

Although the actual lyrics as written by Berry and slightly altered by Ely are not overtly sexual, various “dirty” versions were made up after The Kingsmen’s single became a hit.

For example, in the original lyrics the second verse starts with: “Three nights and days we sailed the sea. / Me think of girl constantly.”

In raunchified versions, those words were turned into things like: “Each night at ten, I lay her again / I f--k my girl all kinds of ways.”

It was soon rumored that the hard-to-understand lyrics on The Kingsmen record were obscene, which caused much moral harrumphing.

Indiana Governor Matthew Welsh declared the record to be “pornographic” and banned it from the state’s airwaves. Some radio stations in other states also banned it.

The FCC and FBI even conducted official investigations — at taxpayers’ expense — to try to decipher the muffled words on The Kingsmen’s hit single.

Federal investigators grilled Richard Berry and Jack Ely and played the Kingsmen record forward and backward at various speeds, including 33 rpm, 45 rpm and 78 rpm.

In February 1964, one exasperated FCC official uttered what became a legendary rock history quote when he reported:

       “We found the record to be unintelligible at any speed.”

Around that same time in 1964, lawyer Ralph Nader was working as an advisor to a U.S. Senate subcommittee that was looking into car safety.

Armed with the knowledge he gained from that work, Nader wrote a historic book on the subject. He titled it Unsafe at Any Speed.

It became a bestseller, gave Nader his initial fame and led to many of the modern improvements in car safety we now take for granted (such as seat belts).

The similarity between Nader’s book title and the FCC official’s quote about “Louie Louie” suggests that Ralph was either aware of the FCC quote — or blissfully unaware that his title was an ironic echo of “unintelligible at any speed.”

What makes the connection even odder is the fact that Unsafe At Any Sped was published on November 30, 1965, exactly two years to the day after The Kingsmen’s recording of “Louie Louie” entered the Billboard Top 40.

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Further reading and listening…

“We will bury you!” (Or something like that.)

On November 18, 1956, Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union, attended a party at the Polish Embassy in Moscow.

It was at that event that Khrushchev uttered what became his most famous (and infamous) quote.

What he said in Russian was “My vas pokhoronim.” 

In American news reports, those words were translated as “We will bury you.”

The remark was part of some offhand comments Khrushchev made that night about two recent events.

One event was the brief revolution in Soviet-dominated Hungary, which had just been brutally squashed by Russian troops.

The other was the recent bombing and invasion of Egypt by France, Britain and Israel, precipitating the Suez Crisis.

At the Embassy party on November 18th, Khrushchev blamed Western-backed “Fascist gangs” for fomenting the rebellion in Hungary. He also denounced the “imperialists and their puppets” who had attacked Egypt, a recent Soviet ally.

Then, according to an Associated Press report, Khrushchev added:

“Socialist states...base ourselves on the idea that we must peacefully co-exist. About the capitalist states, it doesn’t depend on you whether or not we exist...If you don’t like us, don’t accept our invitations and don’t invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”

The story caused quite a stir here in the U.S.

Headlines blared things like “‘We Will Bury You,’ Russian Boss Rants” and “Raging Soviet Boss Shouts At The West ‘We Will Bury You.’”
 
Given the growing nuclear arms race and Cold War tensions at the time, it’s understandable that most Americans assumed Khrushchev was either threatening or boasting or both.

His immediately notorious four-word quote seemed to imply that the Soviet Union could — and some day would — violently destroy America and its allies, implicitly in a nuclear war that many people worried was inevitable.

Today, many books and posts on the Internet say that “We will bury you” is a mistranslation of what Khrushchev said and that he was actually being more flippant than hostile.

A number of history and quotation books now suggest that the Russian words “My vas pokhoronim” really mean something like “We shall be present at your funeral” or “We shall outlive you.”

A recent post on the always-interesting site Cracked.com, titled “6 Mistranslations That Changed The World,” offered this explanation:

“As it turns out, a better literal translation of his words would have been, ‘We will be present when you are buried.’ This was actually a pretty common saying in Soviet Russia. What Khrushchev really meant was, ‘We will outlast you.’ It was just the usual ‘communism is better than capitalism’ posturing that went on all the time in the Cold War, but thanks to misinterpretations...Americans thought Khrushchev was threatening to literally bury us in the rubble of a nuclear attack.”

I grew up in the 1950s, when we practiced “duck and cover” drills at school and families were building fallout shelters in their back yards.

I tend to think that the modern spin on Khrushchev’s most famous quote overlooks a few simple facts.

Back in 1956, The nuclear arms race and the threat of nuclear war were real and taken very seriously.

So, “We shall be present at your funeral” or “We shall outlive you” or any of the other “better” translations that are now suggested would likely have sounded just as hostile and threatening to most Americans.

Thus, the “issue” of whether “We will bury you” was a mistranslation or misquote seems kind of moot to me.

Of course, six years later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we found out that Khrushchev didn’t really have the sharries to start a nuclear war with the U.S.

He backed down after President John F. Kennedy threatened to push the button first if the Soviets refused to remove the nuclear missiles they had secretly shipped to Cuba.

I don’t know what Kennedy said to Khrushchev behind the scenes during that high stakes game of Cold War brinksmanship.

But I suspect it might have been something along the lines of “We will bury you.”

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Related reading and viewing…

How “God Bless America” created a musical duel between Woody Guthrie and Irving Berlin

In 1917, during World War I, American songwriter Irving Berlin was drafted into the U.S. Army.

He was already a successful songwriter at that point, known for huge hits like “Alexander's Ragtime Band” (1911) and “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” (1915).

Berlin was stationed at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York. Not long after he arrived, an officer asked if he’d be willing to write a musical show for the soldiers at the base to perform.

Berlin agreed and composed a set of songs for a musical he called Yip-Yip-Yaphank.

He wrote at least eight songs for the show. They included “Oh, How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning,” which became a hugely popular hit, and several now-forgotten songs, like “Mandy” (a minstrel-style song performed by soldiers in drag and blackface).

One notable song Berlin wrote for Yip-Yip-Yaphank that didn’t make it into the show was titled “God Bless America.” 

Before the musical was performed in July 1918, Berlin decided “God Bless America” was “too solemn.” So, he cut it from the song list, stored his written copy away and forgot about it for twenty years.

Then, in 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Adolf Hitler and prevent a second world war ended up bringing the song to light.

Berlin happened to be in London when Chamberlain announced that he and Hitler had signed the “Anglo-German Pact of Friendship,” or “Munich Agreement.” That pact permitted Nazi Germany to annex the part of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland in return for Hitler’s supposed promise to refrain from any further land grabs and remain at peace with other European countries.

Chamberlain optimistically proclaimed that the agreement had secured “peace for our time.” This inspired Berlin. He told a friend he wanted to write “a great peace song,” a patriotic song that celebrated America at peace.

After a couple of false starts, Berlin recalled his abandoned song from Yip-Yip-Yaphank. He made some edits to the lyrics and ended up with the song as we know it today:

       “God bless America,
       Land that I love,
       Stand beside her and guide her
       Through the night with a light from above.
       From the mountains to the prairies,
       To the oceans white with foam,
       God bless America,
       My home sweet home.”

Berlin gave his patriotic “peace song” to renowned American singer Kate Smith for its initial unveiling.

She debuted it on her popular radio on November 11, 1938 — the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day, the commemoration of the peace agreement that ended World War I.

Ultimately, Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Hitler failed to prevent World War II.

However, “God Bless America” quickly became a huge hit, a signature song for Smith and the unofficial American national anthem.

It also rubbed activist-folksinger Woody Guthrie the wrong way.

Berlin and Smith were rich and famous celebrities. Part of what might now be called “the 1 percent.”

Woody was a poor man who knew from first-hand experience that life in America wasn’t so sweet for most people in late 1930s — the height of the Great Depression.

He felt America needed an anthem for those common folk, instead of a mawkish one that just waved the flag.

So, in 1940, Guthrie wrote a responding song he titled “God Blessed America.”

In the original lyrics, he ended each verse with the words “God blessed America for me.”

And, the original last verse had a sardonic twist:

       “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
       By the Relief Office I saw my people,
       As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering
       If God blessed America for me.”

Over the next few years, Guthrie reworked the lyrics of the song. It still reflected the viewpoint of working class Americans. But he gave it a more positive spin, changed the line used at the end of the verses and retitled it.

Guthrie recorded that version of the song in 1944. You’ll probably recognize it immediately from the first verse:

“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”

Yep. Woody Guthrie’s well-known song “This Land is Your Land” started out as “God Blessed America,” his response to Irving Berlin. And, ironically, it is now almost as famous and iconic as Berlin’s “God Bless America.”

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Related listening and reading…

The Top 10 Quotes about and by U.S. Marines

November 10th is the official birthday of the United States Marines, which were established by the Second Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War, on November 10, 1775.

So, today, I’d like to salute the U.S. Marine Corps by listing the 10 most famous quotations about and by Marines.

1. “From the Halls of Montezuma,
       To the Shores of Tripoli;
       We fight our country's battles
       On the land as on the sea; [changed to “In the air, on land, and sea” in 1942]
       First to fight for right and freedom
       And to keep our honor clean;
       We are proud to claim the title
       Of United States Marine.”
              The Marines’ Hymn 
              Created in the mid-1800s by an anonymous writer
              Copyrighted by the United States Marine Corps on August 19, 1891
              (All three verses and the history of the song are posted here.)

2. “Semper Fidelis” (“Always Faithful”) 
              Official motto of the U.S. Marine Corps 
              Adopted in 1883. (Often shortened to “Semper fi!”)            

3. “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live for ever?” 
              Attributed to Marine Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly 
              Comment to his men at the Battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918

4. “Retreat, hell! We just got here.” 
              Attributed to Marine Captain Lloyd S. Williams 
              Reply to the Germans when asked to surrender at Belleau Wood, June 1916

5. “The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.” 
              American journalist Richard Harding Davis 
              Cablegram announcing the Marines’ 1935 landing in Panama

6. “Gung ho.” 
              Motto adopted by Marine Lt. Col. Evans Fordyce Carlson and his “Raiders” 
              Popularized by articles about Carlson’s Raiders during World War II 
              In Chinese, the term means “work together”

7. “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
              U.S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (1885-1966) 
              Communiqué sent on March 16, 1945  
              Announcing and saluting the victory of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima
              Engraved on the base of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery

8. “We're looking for a few good men.” 
              U.S. Marines' recruiting slogan  
              Created around 1970 by adman Warren Pfaff (1929-2004) 
              Based on the 1776 poster headline: “Looking for a few good men to serve as Marines.”

9. “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” 
              More recent Marine recruiting slogan  
              Voted into Madison Avenue’s Advertising Walk of Fame in 2007

10. “In space, no one can hear you scream – unless it’s the battle cry of the United States Marines!”
              Marine Sgt. Major Frank Bougus (played by R. Lee Ermey) 
              In the debut episode of the science fiction TV series Space: Above and Beyond (1995)

OK, that last one is not exactly a famous quote. But it’s a favorite of mine.

I’m a big fan of both the United States Marines and of Space: Above and Beyond, in which future Leathernecks fight to protect Earth from aliens.

If we ever do face a war with aliens, I expect the U.S. Marines will be there risking their lives for us on the front lines, as always.

Semper Fi!

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Further reading about the U.S. Marines Corps…

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is not in the Bible and may not mean what you think…

It’s not surprising that many people think the quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” comes from the Bible.

There are at least five verses in the Bible’s Book of Proverbs that talk about using a rod to beat a child — for his own good, of course.

The most famous is Proverbs 13:24: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”

Proverbs 26:13-14 offers this bit of Old Testament parenting advice: “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. / Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”

However, although “spare the rod and spoil the child” was probably inspired by these Biblical verses, it does not come from Proverbs or any other part of the Bible.

It’s from the long 17th-century poem Hudibras, written by Samuel Butler (1612-1680), a cheeky British poet who enjoyed mocking religious extremists and hypocrites.

Butler’s epic satire follows the trials and tribulations of a Sir Hudibras.

Initially, the poem describes Hudibras as a noble and pious knight. But during the course of the story he is shown to be a buffoonish poseur and nitwit.

Butler published Hudibras in three parts, in 1663, 1664 and 1678. The famous “spare the rod” quote comes in Part II, which was entered into the Stationer’s Registry (Britain’s early version of a copyright office) on November 5, 1663.

At the end of Part I, Sir Hudibras is put in prison after getting into a fracas with a group of locals who were watching a bear baiting “entertainment.”

In Part Two, a widow Hudibras had been wooing comes to visit him in jail and says she’ll get him out if he’ll prove he truly loves her.

When he tries to profess his love, she quickly rejects flowery words as the kind of proof she wants:

       “Hold, hold, quoth she; no more of this,
       Sir Knight; you take your aim amiss:
       For you will find it a hard chapter                         
       To catch me with poetic rapture.”

The widow then suggests that Hudibras could prove his love by attempting suicide. For example, she says, if he tried to hang himself she would believe him and cut him down before he died.

Hudibras thinks that option sounds a bit “too harsh.” So, the widow suggests that Hudibras could prove his love by whipping himself or by letting her whip him.

She then explains the benefits of the “virtuous school of lashing.”

Near the end of her spiel on the joys of the whip, the widow utters the famous “spare the rod” quotation:

       “If matrimony and hanging go
       By dest’ny, why not whipping too?                           
       What med’cine else can cure the fits
       Of lovers when they lose their wits?
       Love is a boy by poets stil’d;
       Then spare the rod and spoil the child.”

Hudibras promises to enroll in the “school of lashing” if the widow gets him released. She does. But then Hudibras reneges on his promise, a betrayal that sets up the plot of Part III of the poem (in which Hudibras gets his final comeuppance.)

Samuel Butler was almost certainly thinking of the Biblical verses about rods and children when he wrote his own famous line about them.

And, on the surface, his words “spare the rod and spoil the child” may seem to have a meaning similar to the Bible verses — i.e., parents should discipline their children with physical punishment if they want them to turn out “right” and keep them from becoming spoiled brats or worse.

However, what Butler implied in between the lines of his satiric verse is believed to be more bawdy than Biblical.

One theory is that it’s a nudge-nudge-wink-wink comment on how to “spoil” and thus prevent a pregnancy.

Other theories suggest it may refer to sexual fetishes involving a dominatrix, bondage and discipline sex games and sexual spanking and whipping.

One thing is certain: what Samuel Butler was talking about in that part of his poem Hudibras is a bit different than what the pious authors of the Book of Proverbs had in mind.

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