For more than 30 years, the Kingsmen got no royalties from their classic recording of the garage-band standard "Louie, Louie." Monday, the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that finally let them collect.
The court, without comment, rejected an appeal by two companies that held the rights to the recording and admitted they paid no royalties to the band.The Kingsmen's 1963 version was not the first recording of "Louie, Louie," and it wasn't exactly the most on-key - but it was a massive hit and has been a party favorite ever since.
Federal officials launched an obscenity investigation of the band's recording but declared it "unintelligible at any speed."
The band signed a contract in 1968 that was supposed to pay its members 9 percent of the profits or licensing fees from the record. But the Kingsmen got nothing, and in 1993 they sued Gusto Records and GML, which owned the rights to the recording.