At a time when you would have heard, “Hey Jude” playing on the radio, employees at WGIL Radio might have been saying, “Hey, Louise.” As in Louise Harrison, who just so happened to be the sister of Beatles legend George Harrison.
The lone Beatles sister, Louise Harrison Caldwell lived in Galesburg for a few months in 1968 and while here worked as a copy writer, read commercials and was an occasional on-air personality at WGIL Radio when it was located across from the Orpheum Theatre at 60 S. Kellogg St.
“Nobody knew I was related to George Harrison,” Harrison said on a return trip to Galesburg in 2007 for a Beatles tribute called “A Hard Day’s Night in Galesburg.”
That’s not entirely true.
Bill Pearson and Jimmie Carr — a couple of Louise Harrison’s co-workers at WGIL in 1968 —remember her well. On Tuesday, Pearson and Carr shared some memories of Louise Harrison, who died this week in Florida at the age of 91.
Pearson, the famed play-by-play voice of Silver Streaks basketball during the Glory Days of the 1960s, had been at WGIL for four years when Louise Harrison Caldwell joined the staff in 1968.
“We were all amazed when we learned of her connection to George Harrison,” Pearson said. “I remember her as a soft-spoken person, personable but reserved. She spoke of George quietly, perhaps humbly is a more appropriate appraisal. She spoke of him only when asked about him.”
According to a 2007 interview with The Register-Mail upon her one-day return to Galesburg, Harrison noted she hosted a radio program on WGIL called “Lunch with Louise” on which she said she played all kinds of “crazy stuff,” such as Tiny Tim’s high-pitched version of “Tiptoe through the Tulips.”
RIP Louise Harrison, dies at 91
George Harrison with his sister Louise Harrison, 1964 pic.twitter.com/L2WHjWqezE
— Beatles Archive (@BeatlesArchive2) January 31, 2023
Harrison said she was living in Galesburg in 1968 when “Hey Jude” was released. She told The Register-Mail it was “great, so far” to be back in Galesburg and was looking forward to driving by her former house, which she believes was on Parkview Road.
Pearson said he does not remember the reason why she had come to Galesburg, nor where she had come from.
“I don’t believe she was there for an extended period of time — not sure she was there for one year,” Pearson said.
The 1968 and 1969 Galesburg City Directories list Mrs. Louise Caldwell, a copy writer at WGIL, as residing at 1211 Parkview Road in Galesburg. Her husband at the time was Scottish mining engineer, Gordon Caldwell.
Carr, Pearson’s color analyst for Streaks basketball broadcasts on WGIL, had just started at the station in 1968 and remembers Harrison’s arrival in Galesburg. He recalls Harrison being hired by then General Manager Roger Coleman.
“I think we were all shocked when Roger told us who she was and who her brother was,” Carr said. “It was a shocker for me.”
We’re saddened to hear of the passing of George Harrison’s sister Louise Harrison. The Beatles Story would like to pay its respects to the family and friends of Louise at this sad time.
Rest in peace ️ https://t.co/rESZZLRnhz
— The Beatles Story (@beatlesstory) February 1, 2023
However, Carr doesn’t think it was a gimmick hire for Coleman.
“Frankly, Roger wasn’t really into the Beatles,” Carr said. “I think he hired Louise for her voice. She was very articulate, and she had the British accent. And she was very intelligent.”
Carr said he tried to talk to Harrison about her famous brother, but she was tight-lipped.
“It was so interesting, because Louise just did not like talking about her brother,” Carr said. “She didn’t deny it, and she would talk about him if we asked, but she just didn’t want to talk about it on the air.
“Don’t get me wrong, she was very proud of George. But if it wasn’t for her last name, and of course her British accent, you’d never know she was the sister of a Beatle.”
And Louise Harrison was a good fit at the station, according to Carr.
“She was fun. She was popular in the office, and she just really blended in,” he said.
Years after leaving Galesburg, Louise Harrison went on to manage Liverpool Legends, a Beatles tribute band based out of Branson, Missouri, that performed at “A Hard Day’s Night in Galesburg” in 2007.
Jeff Pacheco helped organize the Beatles tribute event and secured Louise Harrison and the Liverpool Legends to come to Galesburg. Pacheco connected with Harrison at another Beatles fest in 2006, and told her he wanted to bring the Liverpool Legends to Galesburg.
“I told Louise that I was spearheading a group to bring a Beatles fest to Galesburg, and she looked at me and said, ‘Galesburg?’,” Pacheco said. I said Galesburg, Illinois, and she goes, “Oh my God, I used to live there.’
“She went into how she worked at the radio station, and that she would love to come back and bring her band. Having her be part of it, I thought would be a helluva draw.”
Harrison spent three days in Galesburg for “A Hard Day’s Night in Galesburg,” but from Pacheco’s view, she didn’t connect much with the town she called home for a year.
“Whenever I was around her that weekend, she didn’t seem real tickled to be back,” Pacheco said.
