Love You So - Ron Holden

To start off 2011 , here is an all time favorite -


 Check it out for the whole story
 http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8705

Ron Holden and the Thunderbirds ended up at Fred Rasmussen’s Acme Sound and Recording home studio in North Seattle (7551 28th Avenue NE) with hopes of cutting his “Love You So,”  “Louie Louie” -- and perhaps something else.

 “We did it in Fred Rasmussen’s living room. For 19 hours there were 14 people in this room which was 10 x 12 [feet] -- it was the engineer, his wife, his daughter, and his dog sitting there on the couch, and a couple of the guys’ girlfriends. Larry Nelson was playing the claves and Chuck Markulis was playing the tambourine. Little Willie Bell and I were in the alcove and the other guys were all in the other room. And every time the dog would bark, we’d have to start over! On “Love You So” it was up into the 90s on takes! It was ridiculous!”

The Thunderbirds had worked out an arrangement of “Love You So” that employed the unusual and hypnotically off-beat Caribbean-derived clavé pulse. The song, however, kicks off with what is considered (by modern-pop-single-standards) an impossibly long -- twenty bar -- instrumental intro before Holden’s plaintive vocals begin. It was apparently after cutting “Louie Louie” (with Bell on vocals), that the crew decided to try another song and Holden improvised some lyrics over a raucous riff that became the thrown-together gem, “My Babe.”

Session completed, the Master Tape was sent to Challenge Records, which promptly shipped it back saying that their corporate focus had recently shifted to Country/Western music. But Nelson and Markulis reminded them of their previous agreement and the label compromised by shipping the would-be record moguls 5,000 label-less copies of the “Love You So” / “My Babe” single. That was when Nelson and Markulis’ Nite Owl Record company (423 Boren Street) was born. The first task was designing, printing, and gluing (one-by-one) new labels on those discs.
Sidebar Dave Marsh in his book Louie Louie http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=dave+marsh+louie+louie&x=0&y=0, , has a lot more about Ron Holden and the Playboys

Comment - The Good Old Days , right 

June 13 , 1960