"But it sounds like that"

If you can hear, then it is safe to say you have experienced a mondegreen. A mondegreen is the name given to the what happens when you think you have correctly heard what some one said, but in actuality you have misheard it as something that sounds similar to what they said, but with a completely different meaning. The term comes from when an author misheard the line of a song, "And laid him on the green" as, "And Lady Mondegreen". While experiencing a mondegreen usually effects only listener, there is one famous case where multiple people experiencing mondegreens while listening to a single song brought the full force of the FBI down upon it.

     Back in the 1960's, rock and roll was starting to hit it's stride, however the ride was not without it's bumps. Elvis had stirred up massive controversy with his shaking hips on TV, radio DJ's were bringing more and more African American music to the attention of white children and more and more people were starting to worry about rock and roll driving kids to sex and drugs. All of this worry and fear came to something of a head in 1963 when the band the Kingsmen covered the song "Louie, Louie", the lyrics of which are below.

Louie, Louie, 

me gotta go. 

Louie, Louie, 

me gotta go. 

A fine little girl, she wait for me; 

me catch a ship across the sea. 

I sailed the ship all alone; 

I never think I'll make it home 

Three nights and days we sailed the sea;

me think of girl constantly. 

On the ship, I dream she there; 

I smell the rose in her hair. 

Me see Jamaica moon above; 

It won't be long me see me love. 

Me take her in my arms and then 

I tell her I never leave again.

     "Louie, Louie" had been around since the 50's, but it never gained national exposure until the Kingsmen's version became a hit in 1963. However there were several problems with their version of the song. First the quality of the actual recording of the song wasn't the best. The main recording that was released was only supposed to be practice version of the song. Next, the boom microphone used to record the song was so high up, the singer had to stand on his tip toes just so that he could be heard. Also, the night before, the band had done an epic 90 minute "Louie Louie" performance the night before the recording. That certainly didn't help bring any clarity to the lead singer's performance. All in all, the band didn't want to release the version they had, but they were charged for the "practice" session, and they decided to keep it. It was this version that made it big.

     Since parts of the song were hard to understand due to the low quality, it is no wonder that rumors began to spread as to the the actual content of the song. While the actual lyrics of the song are very tame, the rumored versions were anything but. Below is one version of what some people thought was actually being sung:

Louie, Louie, 

grab her way down low. 

Louie, Louie, 

grab her way down low. 

A fine little bitch, she waits for me; 

she gets her kicks on top of me. 

Each night I take her out all alone; 

she ain't the kind I lay at home 

Each night at ten, I lay her again; 

I fuck my girl all kinds of ways. 

And on that chair, I lay her there; 

I felt my boner in her hair. 

If she's got a rag on, I'll move above; 

It won't be long, she'll slip it off. 

I'll take her in my arms again; 

tell her I'd rather lay her again.

The lyrics above were not the only dirty version that circulated, with the above and several others being passed around by teenagers thinking that those were the actual lyrics. Eventually, a parent managed to come into possession of a version of the lyrics like the one above and the poo, as we say, hit the fan. 

     As the song was gaining more and more traction over the nation's airwaves, it is no wonder that some parents eventually brought "Louie Louie" and its supposed lyrics to to the government and complained. What followed was a nearly three year long investigation by the FBI. Anyone and everyone who had anything at all to do with "Louie Louie" was brought in and questioned. Acting on one rumor that to hear the profane version of the song, you had to play the record at a different speed than it was recorded the FBI tried playing the record at any and every speed they could, but they still could not hear any clear profanity. Eventually they gave up, saying that they were, "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record."

     "Louie Louie" went on to be covered many more times, eventually becoming one of the most covered songs in history. If the false controversy around it accomplished anything, it may have cemented in the minds of some parents and concerned citizens the darker side of rock and roll. Unfortunately rock and roll would sometimes go on to live up to those expectations.










Sources:
1. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqvXukKL3CwOwp8-d3_t1YXZiQrZiM8nyjJ-lFPOIdKxvhP9NPYdV9SJ5ITfaAta5PqzBzqsczJZVkuf0wlyBx27A3VVVSDVgdTKHThV8dP-D2kbRTmKi7kFVllobCJXvqNpID9z6wKG-9/s1600/hard+of+hearing.jpg
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
3. http://www.fun-with-words.com/mala_mondegreens.html
4. http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/humor/mondegreens.asp
5. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mondegreen
6. http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/louie.asp
7. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/funny/lascivious-louie-louie
8. http://oldies.about.com/library/weekly/aa091602a.htm
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie

"I am a Jelly Doughnut"

     The phrase above is an often quoted as being the translation of, "Ich bin ein Berliner", the famous phrase which Kennedy said during his speech on June 26, 1963 in Berlin. I had heard about this some time ago and recently did some digging into if this was true or not.

     

     The first place I stopped, and the first place many people stop when looking up info, was Wikipedia. On the page entry for the speech, there is a huge section dedicated to dealing with this misconception. According to the article, the reason seems to come from Kennedy's use of the word "ein", which he was correct in using since he was speaking in a figurative sense. The failure in translation seems to come from the fact that a "berliner" is a common name for a pastry outside of the city of Berlin. To quote the article:

     Whereas the citizens of Berlin do refer to themselves as Berliner, they generally do not refer to jelly doughnuts as Berliner. While these are known as Berliner Pfannkuchen (literally, "Berlin pancake"), commonly shortened to Berliner in other areas of Germany, they are simply called Pfannkuchen (pancakes) in and around Berlin.[12] According to the German History Museum, the theoretical ambiguity went unnoticed by Kennedy's audience.[13] As German professor Reinhold Aman writes, "Ich bin (ein) Berliner means 'I am a Berliner' or '...a male person/native of Berlin' and absolutely nothing else!...No intelligent native speaker of German tittered in Berlin when J.F.K. spoke, just as no native speaker of German, or one who does know this language would titter if someone said, Ich bin ein Wiener or Hamburger or Frankfurter."[14]

      Doing some further looking into on the "jelly doughnut" legend, I came across an article on About.com article, which quoted an older CNN article, that the man that who translated the phrase for JFK to use in his speech, was actually educated in Berlin and was fluent in German. Also, according to an article on Snopes.com, the speech was practiced in front of several German officials, including the mayor of Berlin himself! Also, that article points out that any laughter heard from around that point in the speech was from JFK making a quip thanking his translator for translating his German.

     While it would have been embarrassingly funny for one of our most memorable presidents to have called himself a "jelly doughnut" for all of history to remember, the truth is much more mundane than urban legend would have us believe. Which, the more I look into history seems often to be the case.

Sources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner
2. http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner_2.htm
3. http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/berliner.asp