Cool Groove #2: "Luci Baines"

The American Four (1973).

It’s not every American president’s daughter who gets a groovy rock & roll song written about her. In fact, there’s only one it’s ever happened to, and she earned it via an unexpected display of coolness that made her the envy of women across America and the target of affection for at least one unknown garage band.

That would be Luci Baines Johnson, the youngest daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his erstwhile wife, Lady Bird.

The big moment that suddenly, if only temporarily, made Luci the top teenager in America occurred when she was 16 years old and was flown out to represent her dad at a Young Citizens for Johnson barbecue fundraiser in Beverly Hills on August 8, 1964. (Johnson, of course, took office when JFK was assassinated and was soon running against Barry Goldwater to retain the presidency.)

Without forcefully relocating anyone to a new hamlet or dropping a single bomb, the Beatles had taken control of the hearts and minds of young Americans via their performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February of 1964. The public was as attuned to its youngsters and the spirit of rock & roll as it had ever been before, and, in all probability, so was Luci Baines Johnson.

After all, she was a member of the Pepsi Generation, “comin’ at ya, goin’ strong,” as the advertising jingle went in those days. And she was about to unveil a mean Watusi in conjunction with the nation’s hunkiest movie star.

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It couldn’t have been easy to be the daughter of Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ was a political animal right down to his bones. He was coarse and crude and aggressive and was known to lean in and literally breathe down the necks of friends and foes alike while discussing policy with them in the corridors of power.

Sure, he’d smile for a camera on occasion and laugh while picking some poor beagle up by its ears, but lightheartedness was not his forte.

LBJ wanted the result he was looking for and wouldn’t stop until he got it, which is basically why he quit pursuing reelection when he belatedly admitted to himself that the United States couldn’t win the Vietnam War.

Luci must have felt some pressure when she traveled to Beverly Hills to make her political debut, but she handled herself with aplomb while addressing the guests and totally won them over when she stumbled upon the golden opportunity to cut a rug with—drum roll, please—the King of Cool himself, Mr. Steve McQueen.

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McQueen was at the fundraiser with Natalie Wood, his co-star in the recently released hit picture “Love with the Proper Stranger.” It would have been hard to miss them, as they were just about the two best-looking people on earth at the time, and they were dressed to the nines.

The big dance craze that summer was the Watusi—everyone was doing it—so Luci took to the dance floor with McQueen to very publicly give it a go. Her abandon in the moment was a great deal of fun to watch, not to mention plain old charming, a little trick her father couldn’t pull off if he tried. And he never tried.

Here’s a newsreel that captured Luci getting down for posterity.

Millions of Americans suddenly couldn’t get enough of Luci, including an unknown garage rock band called the American Four. In October, a mere two months after newspapers started referring to the president’s daughter as “Luci Watusi,” the American Four released a single called “Luci Baines.”

This may well be my favorite garage rock single, and it never even made a dent on the Billboard charts. Its joyful exuberance mirrors Luci’s on that dance floor—it paints a simplistic yet vivid picture of a young girl dropping her inhibitions and really shaking it loose.

It’s about the promise of rock & roll, in other words.

That’s pretty terrific, and you have to admire the balls of a bunch of kids who could have easily been handed rifles and shipped off to Southeast Asia by the father of the girl they were singing about!

Sure, it’s basically “Twist and Shout” with a different set of lyrics. But at least half the garage rock tunes from the period were rewrites of either “Twist and Shout” or “Louie Louie.” That’s the game kids were playing at the time. Lots of them played it really well, too.

I’d like to think Luci Watusi danced to this in her bedroom at the White House when she was getting ready for her day. You have to figure she did.

I mean, wouldn’t you?!

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There’s a nutty epilogue to all of this.

That guy singing the lead vocal on “Luci Baines” is Arthur Lee, and the guitarist is Johnny Echols. When the American Four broke up, Lee and Echols went on to form the legendary psychedelic band, Love, whose album Forever Changes is often cited as one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded.

I’ve never been convinced of Forever Changes, not completely anyway, and I’ve tried several times over the years. But wouldn’t it have been great if the president’s daughter had been lionized on an album filled with song titles like “The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This” and “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale?”

“Luci Baines Finds Real Freedom Out of the House and Her Old Man Picks a Dog Up by Its Ears” might have worked.