LOUIE production update – June 2019 with Don Gallucci

photo by Laurelish Rudy

About a week and a half ago, I had an opportunity to visit with the man formerly known as Don Gallucci.

Don’s kinda like the lost and forgotten member of the original Kingsmen that recorded LOUIE LOUIE back in 1963. His keyboard playing is the very first sound you hear in that iconic recording.

It’s been awhile since Don’s been involved with any big events that acknowledged his musical heritage, but we were fortunate to help him break that cycle with a little followup interview for the LOUIE documentary project.

In addition to playing keyboards on the world’s most popular version of the world’s most performed rock song, Don was also…

– the producer of The Stooges‘ second album, “Fun House“, featuring a relatively unknown singer at the time, Iggy Pop, aka James Osterberg;

– the creative force behind “Touch“, the self-titled album considered to be the very first progressive rock album;

– the producer/arranger of probably the very first professional recordings of Tom Waits, which were eventually released as part of the two “Early Years” compilations released by Rhino Records in the early 1990s… without proper credit.

Despite these associations, up until a recent interview with some folks at WBEZ Radio of Chicago, Don had no idea about Iggy’s uniquely inspired renditions of LOUIE (refer to 1974 “Metallic K.O.” + 1993 “American Caesar” albums), much less both Iggy and Tom’s cinematic adventures with Jim Jarmusch.

(I did tell Don about the new zombie film – “The Dead Don’t Die,” which sounds like a total blast!!)

Needless to say, it was a very enjoyable and entertaining afternoon!

Don dropped out of the music biz ages ago, changed his last name to Caverhill and wound up doing quite well with a career in real estate.

Anyone want to buy his beautiful Beverly Hills hilltop home?

https://youtu.be/Rm5smuqscoc

(… to be continued…)