5
“It came about in a very trivial way. We had been playing together for three or four years
at school dances, sock hops and other events in the Salinas area, but never anywhere
else. We were too young to gig in bars. At that time Doug Sahm and his family were living
here on the West coast, in Prunedale, and our bass player knew his children. As a result,
his wife got to hear our first ever recording, probably cut in some funky studio in Salinas.
I remember that it included among other things a version of Wilson Pickett’s ‘Three Time
Loser’ - and apparently she liked what she heard. So suddenly Doug had set us up with a
recording contract at Epic Records.”
But Louie & The Lovers was not Louie’s first group.
“I started to play guitar already when I was fourteen years old. My first group was called
The Omens, but in the beginning I rarely sang. I was too shy.”
The Omens were pretty much the same line-up that later became The Lovers.
“In my family we mostly listened to Hispanic and country music. My mother loved the
crooners; she’d go from Pedro Infante to Hank Williams in a heart beat. Then I found
sixties rock, rhythm’n’blues and artists like Ray Charles. In the band we loved Creedence,
and I gradually began to write my own songs. Songs which we then recorded with The
Lovers, for that first album.”
Actually, they were calling themselves Country Fresh at that time, but were spontaneously
re-chistened by Sahm during his first meeting with Epic Records.
“He casually told us that he’d dreamt up that name during themeeting and that the record
company people loved it. So from that moment on we were Louie & The Lovers.”
They were probably in awe of Sahm, like most people who got to meet him.
“He was
extremely fascinating to us, a real rock ‘n’ roll guy. Amped up, really energetic. A fast
mover, a fast talker!”
