OC-US Music Legend has passed

[stephenkatsea]

Barry Rillera has passed. He grew up in OC, Santa Ana. He went on to be the guitarist, musical director and road manager for the Righteous Brothers. Barry and his brothers Butch and Rick formed an OC band known as the Rythm Rockers. They wrote and performed a song they called "El Loco Cha Cha". That song was heard by Richard Berry. He later recorded it as a song he called "Louie Louie". Barry was one of the finest rock guitarists in the country. He was once a public school teacher and looked more like a teacher than a world reknown guitarist, with the likes of The Beatles, Ray Charles etc etc. An amazing talent and just good people. You'll never find a nicer guy. I was blessed to have known him. RIP Barry. Some of us older farts may have seen him perform at the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Newport Beach peninsula.

 

[rrrr]

I'm glad you have those memories.

This snippet from Richard Berry's Wiki page tells the story:

One of the groups Berry played with after leaving the Flairs was Rick Rillera and the Rhythm Rockers, a Latin and R&B group. In 1955, Berry was inspired to write "Louie Louie", a calypso-style song, based on the Rhythm Rockers' version of René Touzet's "El Loco Cha Cha", as well as influenced by Chuck Berry's "Havana Moon". Berry also stated he had Frank Sinatra's "One for My Baby" in mind when writing the lyrics. One night waiting backstage at the Harmony Club Ballroom, Berry took the rhythm of "El Loco Cha Cha" and began to add lyrics, writing them on toilet paper.

Richard Berry and the Pharaohs recorded and released the song as the B-side to his cover of "You Are My Sunshine" on Flip Records in 1957. It became a minor regional hit, selling 130,000 copies. It was re-released as an A-side, and when the group toured the Pacific Northwest, several local R&B bands began to adopt the song and established its popularity.

"Louie Louie" finally became a major hit when The Kingsmen's raucous version – with little trace of its calypso-like origins other than in its lyrics – became a national and international hit in 1963. Paul Revere & the Raiders also recorded the tune in the same studio the week after the Kingsmen, but their version was not a hit. The nearly unintelligible (and innocuous) lyrics were widely misinterpreted as obscene, and the song was banned by radio stations and even investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Rest easy, Barry.

 

[stephenkatsea]

Here's a little more background on Barry Rillera and his connection with the song Louie Louie. It certainly seems to concur with rrrr's post above.