By Aimee Green, Oregonlive.com | Milton “Mike” Korgan, who produced one of the 20th century’s most celebrated songs — “Louie Louie” — died Tuesday. He was known to many by his professional name Ken Chase. He was 85.
Korgan was preceded in death by others responsible for creating the three-chord classic: songwriter, Richard Berry, in 1997; the singer, Jack Ely, in 2015; drummer Lynn Easton in 2020; and guitarist Mike Mitchell in 2021.
The Kingsmen famously recorded the hit during a one-hour recording session that cost them between $36 and $50 on the same block as the Crystal Ballroom in downtown Portland. The song zoomed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
“It was Ken’s unique recording technique that made the Kingsmen’s version of Louie Louie so different and iconic, including lyrics that were not easily understandable,” wrote one of his sons, Todd Korgan, in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive this week.
So the story goes: Ely was the only band member who knew all of the words, but he’d just had his braces tightened and couldn’t speak clearly. This prompted an FBI investigation into whether the recording violated federal obscenity laws with its muffled lyrics. Although the song was banned in multiple markets, the controversy eventually fizzled and it proved to be a timeless treasure.
Mike Korgan was born in a two-room farmhouse on his family’s dairy farm in Oklahoma and was drawn to music as a child. At age 14 he became the youngest person to pass a first-class radio-telephone operator license test and spent his summers working at radio stations, according to his family.
A short while later, he built the first stereo FM radio station west of the Mississippi in Oklahoma City.
While attending Union College in Nebraska, Korgan converted a local AM radio station from a polka format to one featuring rock and roll, roiling some area farmers.
He married Carol Codr in 1960, then moved to Portland to work as program director and disc jockey at KISN radio, then on the AM dial. It was there he took on the on-air personality Ken Chase and became known as one of the “KISN Good Guys.”
According to the Oregon Music Hall of Fame, Korgan and his colleagues “ruled the AM dial like no other station in Portland: at times capturing a whopping 86% of the listening audience.”
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Read more here:
https://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/2025/01/portland-area-producer-of-iconic-song-louie-louie-dies.html
Aimee Green covers breaking news and the justice system. Reach her at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.com or @o_aimee.
Photo: Kingsmen record cover Louie Louie
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100065285328213 (Daily Rock History)