The year was 1988. I was in my junior year of high school, and suddenly I started hearing the word "Lou" getting kicked around the school halls. It would always be couched in insulting phrases, mostly "Man, you got Lou!" Of course, it wasn't long until someone enlightened me with the origin of the phrase, and the story went like this: During the televised United Negro College Fund telethon that year, Lou Rawls came out to perform -- most likely his ubiquitous hit "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" -- and, during the performance, he passed gas loudly enough to be picked up by his handheld microphone.
Depending on which version of the story you heard, Lou was either visibly physically uncomfortable both before and after the incident, or he started laughing and could barely finish the song, well aware of what sound he had unintentionally added to his repertoire. Either way, the phrase "you got Lou" was almost immediately picked up by the youth of America to mean something akin to "you've just embarrassed yourself".
Years later, I thought it would be easy enough to look it up and see if this incident really happened. And to my surprise, there's no concrete evidence that it did. There's no YouTube video dubbed from an old VHS tape from back in the day of his performance, nor is there anything listed on various urban-myth sites debunking it. So I decided to dig a little deeper, and found that there are elements both supporting and refuting that Mr. Rawl's unfortunate digestive issues really ever got any airplay...
Supporting the allegation is the timing of the incident. That it sprung into existence so quickly and specifically certainly makes it sound plausible. Lou Rawls really was the host of the 1988 UNCF telethon, in fact it was officially called the "Lou Rawls Parade of Stars", and ended up raising over $9 million over the course of seven hours. It's quite reasonable that Mr. Rawls might have been near exhaustion or even physically ill from hosting such an event by the time it was over. If it really did happen, the students at my school started using the phrase immediately, lending it some legitimacy. And the fact that it seemed to originate with the black students at my school -- who, I assume, would be more likely to have watched the telecast -- makes it even more so.
Against it, though, is an incident that occurred at the 1976 Grammy awards, at which Lou also performed. No surprise there, since it was that year that "You Will Never Find..." actually hit the charts. However, in that performance, it's reported that Lou started coughing and could barely finish his performance, still coughing and laughing at the fact that he was coughing. Now, either both instances (the Grammys and the UNCF incident) both happened and got locked together, or people are getting the two confused.
Some people report seeing (and when they speak, they're talking about something they remember seeing at least 10 years previous, so you should take it with a grain of salt) Lou coming down some stairs at the 1988 telethon as he opened his song, then stopping singing and looking mortified. The band either stopped or continued to play. Lou either came back in to finish the song or didn't. The thing is, if you look you can find someone who remembers each possible scenario, so there's no definitive answer as far as I can tell.
Lou certainly didn't help his own case when, in the early 90s, he appeared on the sketch comedy show In Living Color, he came on to perform live soothing music for a man about to have a proctological exam. Since that time, some version of the phrase "having Lou" is listed in just about every online slang dictionary you can find.
To sum up, I'm still not sure whether the incident really happened or not. But I'll continue to check every now and then to see if someone has photographic evidence (with audio, of course). In a way, I kind of miss the days when you were unable to just look up things like this and find out immediately if there's any truth to them, and maybe that's why I've latched onto this urban fart myth so readily. True, I didn't find the information I was looking for, but it makes me think about how in the future, there will be no such mysteries as this.
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