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Luigi Creatore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Luigi Creatore (born December 21, 1920 in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City) is a retired American songwriter and record producer.
From a musical family, Creatore began his career as a writer. After serving with the United States military during World War II, in the 1950s he became a writer then partnered with his cousin Hugo Peretti to form the songwriting team of Hugo & Luigi that evolved to producing records. In 1957, they bought into Roulette Records where they both wrote songs for various artists such as Valerie Carr and produced major hits for Jimmie Rodgers including "Honeycomb" (Billboard # 1) and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (Billboard # 3), and "Oh-Oh, I'm Falling in Love Again" and "Secretly".
Two years later, Creatore and Peretti signed a deal with RCA Records where they produced crooner Perry Como. In addition, they produced Sam Cooke and Ray Peterson and wrote the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", producing the hit for The Tokens. With George David Weiss they co-wrote "Can't Help Falling in Love" for RCA's mega-star, Elvis Presley. Peretti and Creatore also wrote the Presley hit single Wild in the Country. He and Peretti left RCA in 1964 to join George David Weiss in writing a musical about the American Civil War. Titled Maggie Flynn (starring Shirley Jones) it briefly ran on Broadway in 1968.
In the 1970s, Creatore and Peretti owned part of Avco Records and then established H&L Records which they operated until retiring at the end of the decade. Among their successes were recordings by The Stylistics and The Softones. They also won the 1977 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album as producers for "Bubbling Brown Sugar".