Jack Ely dies, outlived by hit Louie Louie

Jack Ely, the lead singer of the Kingsmen, best known for 1960s hit Louie Louie, has died in Oregon aged 71. The hit, recorded by Ely in 1963, never reached No 1 in the US but went on to become a rock standard.

Originally written as a calypso in the 1950s by Richard Berry, Louis Louis is sung from the perspective of a sailor telling a barman he is returning to Jamaica to be with the girl he loves. The Kingsmen's version stayed in the US charts for 16 weeks, peaking at No 2.

Ely's incoherent singing is said to have puzzled the FBI, who couldn't understand the lyrics and investigated the track on the grounds that it might be obscene. In a 455-page report, agents concluded that the song was "unintelligible at any speed", says Rolling Stone.

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Jack Ely's son Sean said his father got "quite the kick" out of the FBI's report.

Ely was an original member of the Kingsmen, a band formed in 1959 which mostly performed cover versions of songs, reports The Guardian. Four years later, the group recorded Louie Louie at a studio in their home city of Portland.

The song was said to have cost $36 (£23) to produce and the indistinct lyrics have been attributed to a microphone suspended from the ceiling of the recording studio, forcing Ely to shout up at it.

There have since been hundreds of covers of Louie Louie, by artists including Otis Redding, the Beach Boys, and the Sonics, but the Kingsmens' version remains the definitive recording.

The band followed up with a couple of other minor hits, Money and The Jolly Green Giant, but nothing that compared with the success of Louie Louie.

Ely fell out with the Kingsmen after the hit song came out and formed a rival band called the Courtmen. He later trained horses in Central Oregon.

Sean Ely said that his father was content with his legacy as a one-hit wonder, reports Time. "He wanted to try on different occasions to pursue other endeavours in the music industry, but I think when it was all done and said he was pretty happy that he did Louie Louie."

After all, says Sarah Kaplan in the Washington Post, "if you're going to build a legacy on just two minutes and 42 seconds of music, Louie Louie – said to be the most-recorded song in rock history – is a pretty good bet".