These days you won’t find me in thrift stores looking for records anymore. Long have gone the days of digging for nothing in dollar bins, plus I’ve kind of out-grown wearing dead people’s smelly clothing. But I happened to be in Gilroy, California (of all places) about a year ago when I can across this LP in a Goodwill. I really purchased the record for the title, but to my surprise I ended up with a really wacked out private pressing gem.
However, I was even more astonished when I found out that someone actually re-issued this album on CD. The people at Companion Records, a label that specializes in obscure and idiosyncratic private pressing releases, was down with the “Touchy”. Here is Luie Luie’s bio straight from their pages:
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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 a 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.
– Companion Records
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I listened to the album on my studio monitors, the quality was there, I selected two of my favorite tracks off the album to share with others. Oh yeah, this guy talks about random shit before he plays each song …whoa. I personally think his music would have sounded better if he had a drummer and bass player, but when you’re a lounge act, it’s all about the economy of scale I suppose. True microeconomics. Enjoy!
2. Luie Luie: Lord What A Wonderful World
Super Sonido 
Thanks so much these tracks are weird and great… and the intros!! Really enjoying these interesting tangents of yours and this has sent me straight off to ruin myself buying Companion downloads.
This will be my last comment for the evening, but seriously “Lost” is like a film in song-form just waiting to happen. So cinematic and insane–love it!
Thank you!
–Cathy de la Cruz
I’m so excited to about Luie Luie’s new CD..”TRUMPET OF THE LAST DAYS” …soon to be released!!!
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!
If you love Luie Luie’s “Lost” and “Lord what a Beautiful World” from his “Touchy” album, do yourself a big favor and buy his new CD “Trumpet of the Last Days.” Hear his trumpet cry in “Famine and “Earthquake.” FANTASTIC!!! No one plays trumpet like Luie Luie!!!! He is amazing!!!