Rockin' Robin Roberts has a complete discography of only six songs, but a single line in one of them was the line that launched a thousand garage bands in the mid-'60s. Roberts was born in New York City in 1940, but grew up across the country in Tacoma, WA, where he was by all accounts a full-fledged slide rule-carrying science nerd in high school. But Roberts was also an amazingly charismatic and vibrant singer, and he was soon providing vocals for local group Little Bill the Bluenotes, moving over to become a vocalist for the Wailers when the Bluenotes split up in 1959. Two years later, in 1961, the Wailers recorded an obscure faux Jamaican sea shanty written by Richard Berry called Louie, Louie, which Roberts reportedly found in a dime record bin at a Tacoma store, although accounts vary as to just exactly how Berry's song found its way to the Northwest, as several local bands had versions of it in their set lists.

The Wailers' rendition of it (the group was billed on the record as Robin the Wailers when it was released on their own independent Etiquette Records label) included Roberts' inspired interjection of "let's give it to 'em right now" midway through the song, an interjection that tangibly changed the song from a sailor's late-night lament to a bartender to an expression of willful chaos and an eventual call to arms for garage bands everywhere. When fellow area band the Kingsmen recorded the song two years later in 1963 -- either deliberately or ineptly dropping a beat -- singer Jack Ely kept Roberts' "let's give it to 'em right now" (the only clearly intelligible words on the whole record) shout, and when the Kingsmen's mangled, lurching version of Berry's shanty went to number two in the nation, a cottage industry of ragged, three-chord garage bands was born.

Roberts only recorded six songs with the Wailers (most of those appeared on the group's live The Fabulous Wailers at the Castle album) before leaving the group to concentrate on school. Roberts eventually earned a Masters degree in biochemistry from the University of Oregon before relocating to San Francisco in 1967, where he died in a car accident later that same year. His enduring legacy, although few may realize it, was that single line -- "let's give it to 'em right now" -- which summed up in a handful of syllables the whole point of rock roll. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi