Brother Louie (1973)

Performer: The Stories                                          Writers: Errol Brown & Tony Wilson
Highest US Chart Position: #1                               Label: Kama Sutra Records
Musicians: Ian Lloyd, Steve Love, Kenny Aaronson, Ken Bichel and Bryan Madey

This is just one of the greatest songs ever recorded. “Brother Louie” was written by Errol Brown and Tony Wilson of the British band Hot Chocolate and released as a single in early 1973. The song went all the way to number seven in the U.K. charts, but failed to crack the Hot 100 in the States. The song was about an interracial relationship between a black girl and a white boy and the negative reaction of both of their parents. Though it was released several months prior, it shares a similar construction as Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” with a middle section that tells a story, in this case each of the couple’s parents weighing in with their racist views of the other. Ian Lloyd, the bassist and front man for the American group The Stories, heard the song and liked it. As the group was just finishing up recording their second album for Kama Sutra called About Us, they decided to revamp the song and record it as a single with the last song on the album, the ethereal “What Comes After,” on the B-side. But while their single of “Brother Louie” raced up the charts, sales of the album were lagging, so the company quickly grafted the new track onto subsequent pressings of the album and helped it to reach number 29 that August, at nearly the same time the single hit number one.

The song begins on the downbeat with Ken Bichel’s piano, then Bryan Madey’s hi-hat slipping in just after and coming down crisply on the snare on two. At the same time Steve Love’s distinctive guitar, part wah-wah and part tremolo, strums whole notes in the background before assuming the lead part going into the first verse. “She was black, as the night. Louie was whiter than white.” Madey lays on a heavy backbeat while Bichel provides some nice piano fills between Ian Lloyd’s raspy vocals. The lyrics are great in their attempt to diffuse a delicate situation by being the voice of reason, “Nothing bad, it was good.” But of course his family is not so accepting, and this takes the band into the first chorus. The distinctive chant of the title character’s name owes something to the Kingsmen’s hit single, “Louie, Louie,” from 1963. But the heavily soul-influenced chorus here is utterly different and yet familiar enough to catch the ear of the record-buying public. The other unique signature of the song is the solo sections that follow each chorus. The first is by Love, with Bichel’s organ in the background, and this is followed immediately by the string section playing the same solo part. After the second chorus, however, the guitar and strings trade off and finally play in unison heading into the final out chorus.

It’s a breathtaking number that hits on a number of levels. In a more innocent time, inter-racial couples were much more controversial. But the song also laid the groundwork for white bands with aspirations to play soul music, whether in imitation of black singers, like Wild Cherry, or just singing white like Average White Band. In the summer of 1973 my parents hired a babysitter to stay with me and my brother and sisters during the day. Unbeknownst to them, however, she would pile us all in her powder blue Plymouth Duster and drive us all over the county to visit friends, but especially to visit her boyfriend, a Mexican-American who lived on the south side of town. She used to say this was their song because her parents didn’t want her seeing him. But I spend a lot of time sitting in the car waiting for her with the windows down and the radio on, and as a result it was the first time I really became conscious of popular music. “Brother Louie” always gave me a frisson of the illicit whenever it came on and has since been one of my favorite songs of all time. The rest of the audience evidently felt the same way as it entered the charts on June 23rd and stayed on the charts the entire summer, peaking at number one on August 25th.