Documentary: Louis Prima

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Louis Prima goes back further than you think. Born in New Orleans, his first surge of popularity came in the 1930s, when he was a trumpeter-bandleader with a swinging singing voice. He wrote Sing, Sing Sing, which sounds just like him once you know it came from his pen. In the 1940s, Prima leveraged his heritage to create a string of Italian-themed hits, becoming Metronome's "Showman of the Year" in 1946. Then in 1953, he divorced his third wife and married singer Keely Smith, who had been his singing partner since 1948.

As the big band era became economically unsustainable in the early '50s, Prima and Smith began working their stage act with a small group, eventually featuring Sam Butera on tenor sax. Prima and Smith started performing in Las Vegas in 1954 and from there became a huge hit just as the 12-inch album was taking off and Americans discovered Nevada vacations.

After Prima and Smith divorced in 1961, Prima married his next singer, Gia Maione, continued to perform in Vegas and landed a role in Disney's Jungle Book in 1967. But in 1973, Prima suffered a heart attack. Then in 1975 he had surgery to remove a brain tumor and slipped into a coma. He died in 1978 at age 67.

It's hard to know what to make of Prima today. So much of his 1950s act seems an extension of personae already established by several major black artists, most notably Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan. What Prima added was the conversational timing, joy, sound and flavor of first-generation Italian-American family life.

Prima's essence wasn't that he gave audiences what they wanted. Rather, in his heyday, he gave them what they already knew, served up in a more high-strung, hip and comic routine. Keely Smith was the straight-faced foil—in on the gag but playfully perturbed about being sidelined or marginalized.

I guess what remains special about Prima was his loose, infectious, high-octane optimism and his ability to slur-scat lyric lines, creating charicatures of songs audiences knew well. Interestingly, when I watch Prima's '50s videos on YouTube, my eyes tend to settle on Smith's face, waiting for her glares and glances as Prima hops around like a cocktail shaker, turning American Songbook standards into a Tarantella. Smith may have lacked Prima's zest and musical command, but those saucer eyes and expressions are still priceless.

Here's The Wildest, a documentary on Prima. See what you think...

Used with permission by Marc Myers