You might wonder how a single song earns an entire festival — LouieFest 2007 this weekend. When The Wailers were in high school in Tacoma, they recorded a hit song called “Tall Cool One,” which went to No. 36 on the charts in and took them all across the country and even on national television shows like the “Alan Freed Show” and “American Bandstand,” but it was “Louie Louie” that fans cried out for at every show for decades to come.



Before The Wailers discovered it, “Louie Louie” was an R&B calypso song released by Richard Berry in 1957. The song is a first-person account of a Jamaican sailor telling a bartender (named Louie) how he longed to return home to his girl.



“Rockin’ Robin Roberts found the original version in a discount bin at a record store,” explains Kent Morrill, lead singer of The Wailers and co-organizer of Louiefest. “He thought there was something to it, so he brought it to rehearsal. (Rich) Dangel started working out the main riff on his guitar. Then Roberts started improvising adding the yeah yeah yeah yeah parts.”



Though The Kingsmen’s recording of the song was the one to make national charts, the Kingsmen were Wailers fans and always credited them.



This year Louie Louie became the most recorded song in history surpassing “Yesterday” by the Beatles. This year also happens to be the song’s 50th birthday.



Lucky Louiefest 2007 looks to be the year they will finally succeed in creating a new Guinness Book World Record for the most guitar players simultaneously playing a single song. Guitar registration is free,but the bar is set a little higher. Kansas City is current record holder with 1623 guitar players who played “Smoke on the Water.”



Guitar players converge on Sunday, August 19 at 3 p.m. The event will be linked via satellite to Norway where guitar players will stay up late to participate (it will be 2:30 a.m. their time).



“If we can make it work this year with this one country, next year we can link the whole world together,“ Morrill says.



The two-day Louiefest festival features 56 live bands on four stages. Saturday’s entertainment is devoted to women in music. There will be a beer garden. Shopping will be plentiful at Music Row, a row of music stores and instrument vendors. There will be a lot more food vendors this year, according to Morrill, and a special section just for kids will have a giant pirate ship from Olympia and bounce houses. Louiefest’s rock and roll motorcycle show will be Saturday and the car show Sunday.



[Sprinker Recreation Center, Aug. 18-19, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., $5 suggested donation, C Street South and Military Road South, Spanaway, www.Louiefest.com]