The Big Green House

Thursday, December 05, 2002

 

Doot-doot-doot, doot-doot, doot-doot-doot, doot-doot

We doff the Big Green House cap today to honor the memory of Rich Dangel, guitarist for the Wailers, who passed away this Tuesday. (No, not these Wailers �The Fabulous Wailers.) Mr. Dangel nailed together the three glorious chords that spawned The Song That Would Not Die, �Louie Louie�. (Yeah yeah. I know Richard Berry wrote it. Rich Dangel arranged it for the rock & roll combo & originated the iconic guitar solo.)(Yes, I buy my parentheses wholesale. Why do you ask?)

Since we live in a time of cheap irony, allow me to point out a couple of things:
1) Although he created one of the defining riffs of a generation, changing the face of rock & roll in ways we�re still feeling to this very day, he preferred to be thought of as a jazz guitarist. What must that be like, to be world renowned for something you did as a teenager & would just as soon put behind you as an adult?
2) I�ve heard The Wailers version I don�t know how many times, but whenever I think of �Louie Louie�, I hear The Kingsmen�s version. What can ya do?

And I�ll throw in a little local history, just because I can. There used to be a number of roadhouses around the area; in fact, The Jolly Roger used to stand not far from the Big Green House itself. Anyway, one of the bigger & more popular roadhouses was The Spanish Castle, down around Des Moines. The Wailers & The Sonics used to play there fairly often, drawing large crowds of teenage music fans, including young Jimmy Hendrix (who later inexplicably changed the spelling of his name to �Jimi�, so nip that nit-pick in the bud, pally!), who would bring along his guitar and amp in hopes of playing with the band. Hendrix drew on that time as the basis for the song �Spanish Castle Magic�. Just in case you were wondering.

bmarkey 12/05/2002 07:01:00 PM