My old friend J.C. Clone, a DJ from the infamous KFJC Maximum LOUIE LOUIE marathon, discovered an artist that I needed to know about…
From the CompanionRecords.com website, I quote:
Some years ago, a Los Angeles area collector stumbled across an orphaned copy of the “Touchy” in a thrift store. It was shared through tape trading networks and bootlegged on vinyl — now, Companion Records is proudly offering this first official “Touchy” CD release.
Luie Luie has to be the most jaw-dropping one-man-band lounge act found to date. The “Touchy” serves as an conceptual dance album, an experimental album, as well as a sort of healing LP for ’60s burn-outs. What can his music be compared to? Nothing that we know of.
Luis Johnston is a Southern California screenwriter, painter, and musician who’s spent the past 30 years working in almost complete obscurity. But he’s also written and starred in a feature film and shaken hands with Elvis Presley. Luie has been playing live at various restaurants, lounges, and country clubs for three decades and is still going strong. He released a handful of 45s in the ’70s and one full-length LP, “Touchy” in 1974. And he continues to record unknown quantities of yet to be released CDs.
When you visit the CompanionRecords.com website you can hear MP3 samples of this highly entertaining music!
I met and saw Luie Luie perform with the lounge act “Freddie & Pattie; The Romans” a couple of times in a lounge/restaurant in Torrance, California called the San Franciscan back in the late Eighties.
I had found his album TOTP’s in a thrift store before I met him, so imagine seeing him pop-in with his trumpet in hand in full Elvis gear! When he hit some high notes Freddie complained “Jeezuz Luie! Could you soft peddle on that! You’re blowing my eardrums out!!!” I got his phone number with the intention in getting him produced by a friend on mines label Sympathy for the Record Company, but got sidetracked doing the same for Korla Pandit!
I played him many times back then when guest DJing on the college radio station KXLU on “Stella’s Stray Pop” program!
We found Luie Luie, the creator of Touchy on Spotify, and we believe that he is the inspiration for the character of John John from the jungle in Jamaica with monkeys. Thank you Luie Luie for bringing the spirit back in our lives, after we have tragically lost John John on chatroulette. God bless!