CineVegas to show documentary on the legendary Louis Prima

By Jerry Fink

Monday, Dec. 6, 1999 | 3:24 a.m.

Biography

A brief look at the life of Louis Prima:

Dec. 7, 1910, in New Orleans.

Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where he first studied violin and switched to trumpet.

Formed a jazz band that played in and around New Orleans for five years.

Went to New York City, playing nightclubs, lounges and vaudeville. He recorded more than 70 songs in New York, where he first played Dixieland, then added swing.

Formed a big band.

Hired Keely Smith, 16, as a vocalist. They won a Grammy that year for "That Old Black Magic."

Married Smith, his fourth wife.

Launched with Smith, tenor saxophonist Sam Butera and his band a lounge act at the Sahara hotel-casino in Las Vegas that would make entertainment history.

While still at the height of their fame, and having just signed a multmillion dollar contract with the Desert Inn, divorced Smith. They had two daughters.

Hired Gia Maione as a vocalist.

Married Maione, his fifth wife. They had two children: a boy, Louis Prima Jr., and a girl, Lena Prima, who is a professional musician.

Left Las Vegas for New Orleans with his family and band.

Went into a coma during surgery to remove a brain tumor.

Louis Prima died and was buried in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans next to his father, Anthony, and mother, Angelina.

As long as we can jump and jive, Louis Prima will stay alive.

The undisputed king of Las Vegas lounge acts in the 1950s died 21 years ago, but he is jumping again. The Gap uses Prima's "Jump, Jive an' Wail" for its khaki pants commercials. And David Lee Roth won a Grammy in 1992 for a music video of "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody," one of Prima's biggest hits.

Prima's music is being revived by the likes of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies and the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

"It seems like every time Robert De Niro does a movie, he has Louis Prima music in it," Gia Prima, the entertainer's widow, says.

Lena Prima, Gia and Louis' daughter and part of the local entertainment scene for the past 15 years, is developing a show that will be a tribute to her father's music.

Prima was a musician for the ages, a genius who was unsurpassed in reading an audience and giving it what it wanted.

He was "Jump, Jive an' Wail"; he was "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody"; he was "The Wildest."

A film on the life of this remarkable musician, "Documentary of Louis Prima: The Wildest," will be shown at 6 p.m. Tuesday -- the 89th anniversary of his birth -- at the CineVegas International Film Festival at the Paris Las Vegas hotel-casino.

Born Dec. 7, 1910, in New Orleans to Italian immigrants, he died there on Aug. 24, 1978.

Joe Lauro of Historic Films in New York City produced the 90-minute documentary, using many of Prima's performances that had been captured on film.

Prima's vibrant life was not without controversy, and Lauro says the film does not avoid some of those issues. But mostly this is a film about the public persona and talent of the entertainer who put the zing in swing.

Many of those closest to Prima were interviewed for the project, including Gia; his longtime drummer, Jimmy Vincent; and Sam Butera, the arranger, vocalist and tenor sax player who joined Prima and Keely Smith in Las Vegas in 1954. Together they created a legend.

The film would be incomplete without an interview of Smith, who was up in the stratosphere with Prima as his vocalist and wife through the 1950s.

She appears in the documentary, but Smith said she wasn't interviewed for it.

"I am in the film, but I did not give permission," she said with an air of coolness, speculating that the filmmakers may have used an old interview. "I refused to be part of that project. I didn't want to be one of eight or 10 people giving their viewpoints on Louis."

She said everyone has a different perspective of Prima and a lot of incorrect information has been published, but she is not interested in responding to the many inaccuracies -- at least not at this point.

"I am the only one who lived it. I'm the only one who really knows, and I just decided I would not be one of those people (who was interviewed)," said Smith, who lives in Palm Springs, Calif., but maintains a residence and offices in Las Vegas.

Although their 1961 divorce was a stormy one, Smith said when Prima died they were friends. "After about 10 years we started speaking again," she said.

Smith says Prima was the greatest entertainer that ever lived. "He had magic."

Lauro wanted to capture that magic on film. He said he did the Prima documentary because the entertainer has been largely ignored and often berated as being just a "schlockmeister."

"People remember him fooling around on stage, his comedy. They fail to see him as a great jazz man," Lauro said. "But the evaluation of him was done in the '60s and '70s, when he was past his prime. People finally woke up and realized how completely cool a lot of these older guys are and always were.

"The hippies had different icons. But the world has changed again and (it) realizes that these guys -- Prima and Sinatra and others -- are kings of cool. Very few artists reach the level of talent and coolness of these older guys.

"I want to give Louis Prima the place he deserves in entertainment and jazz history."

During Prima's early years in New Orleans, he developed a love for jazz and put together his first band.

When he was 22 he moved to New York City, where he played jazz, Dixieland and swing in nightclubs, concert halls and Vaudeville. As his career progressed and his reputation grew, he occasionally married and divorced -- five times in all.

Louis Prima recorded hundreds of songs and albums during a career that spanned almost 50 years. The following is a small sample of his creative genius.

"Sing, Sing, Sing"

"Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody"

"Robin Hood"

"Oh Marie"

"Angelina"

"Embraceable You"

"Buona Sera"

"I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine"

"Brooklyn Boogie"

"Boogie in the Bronx"

"Boogie in Chicago"

"New Aulins"

"Marguerite"

"Little Boy Blew His Top"

"Oh Babe"

"Ai-Ai-Ai"

"Ja-Da"

"I Beeped When I Should Have Bopped"

Albums

"Las Vegas Prima Style"

"Louis and Keely"

"Jump, Jive an' Wail"

"Together"

"Pretty Music Prima Style"

"Blue Moon"

"The Wildest"

"Call of the Wildest"

"The Wildest Show at Tahoe"

"The Wildest Comes Home"

"Play Pretty for the People"

"Beepin' & Boppin' "

"Wonderland by Night"

"Wild, Cool & Swingin' "

He was a trumpeter, band leader, singer and composer, writing tunes that became smash hits for himself and others, such as "Sing, Sing, Sing," which became Benny Goodman's signature song, and "Robin Hood," a big tune for the Les Brown Band of Renown.

Prima had a long, successful career -- albeit one that was somewhat of a roller coaster -- long before his Vegas fame.

Retired drummer Jimmy Vincent, a Las Vegas resident, joined Prima's band in New York City in 1939 when Vincent was 16. He played for Prima for 25 years with a break in the '50s when he formed his own band, the Goofers.

Vincent recalls Prima's dynamic personality. "He had such power," he said. "When we did dances, before you knew it all the dancers were gathered around the stage."

He remembers walking down Broadway with Prima one night during the war years when the band was playing at the Paramount Theater and the Astor Roof, two top clubs of the time. Prima was booked to play a war-bond rally.

"His name was up in lights all over town, and he said to me 'Jimmy, this is what I have worked my whole life for. I've made it!,'" Vincent recalled.

Las Vegas was still waiting.

Vincent, 76, said their shows were always unpredictable.

"You never knew when he was going to yell out a tune," Vincent said. "We could do 10 one-hour shows a day, and all of them would be different."

Prima's unpredictability kept the musicians alert and gave an edge to the performances that the audiences appreciated, Vincent said.

Prima's actions were as unpredictable off stage as on.

"One night after a show at the Paramount Theater in New York he said 'Jimmy, I've got a surprise for you,'" Vincent said. Prima took him to a marina to show him a 35-foot cabin cruiser he had just bought.

"He didn't have the money to put it in one of the slips, so it was just tied to a buoy," Vincent said. "He told me the two of us were going to travel by boat up and down the coast to resorts while the rest of the band went by bus.

"Neither one of us knew anything about boats, and I couldn't even swim."

Around 1948 Prima hired 16-year-old Dorothy Keely Smith to be his female vocalist. They toured nightclubs around the country for awhile until they ended up in New Orleans, where they played on Bourbon Street for a number of years. Prima's brother, Leon, owned several nightclubs there.

In 1953 Prima and Smith married. In late 1954 Prima got a two-week gig at the Sahara hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

The show foundered until Prima asked fellow New Orleans native Sam Butera and his band, the Witnesses, to join him.

Butera accepted Prima's offer. The act exploded into what became known as "The Wildest Act in Vegas."

After eight years, Prima and Smith's marriage broke up.

The couple and Butera pursued their own careers.

Butera, a Las Vegas resident, still performs regularly with his band, the Wildest. Currently he is in Shreveport, La.

Smith, 67, also is still active in the entertainment business. The resurgence in the popularity of swing, a style she never abandoned, has increased her bookings. She also has a five-CD deal with Concord Records.

An album that includes a number of Louis Prima songs sung by her and backed by a 17-piece orchestra is due to be released in February. The title is "Swing, Swing, Swing," a variation on the title of one of Prima's most famous compositions: "Sing, Sing, Sing."

In March she begins a tour that will include House of Blues shows around the country, but no dates have been set and she isn't sure Las Vegas is included.

Prima's effect on Las Vegas in the '50s was as profound as that of the Rat Pack in the '60s and Wayne Newton in the '70s.

The Mary Kaye Trio at the Frontier had made lounge acts respectable, but Prima and his wild bunch raised the bar. For seven years they were synonymous with Las Vegas, setting the highest standards for lounge acts.

Lounge acts blossomed in the wake of Prima's popularity, becoming as important to casinos as the main acts in showrooms.

Prima didn't do as well in the large showrooms. Some say it may have been because the lounge setting was more intimate, which allowed Prima to do what he did best: read the mood of the audience and adjust his tempo so that he gave the people a performance they would never forget.

Prima had a reputation of being about as difficult offstage as he was easy-going on, a reputation his widow denies.

Gia Prima, 58, of Toms River, N.J., remembers her husband as a kind and gentle man.

"Louis was never a tempermental artist," she said. "This may sound corny, but he was the sweetest man I ever knew, and funny. Living with Louie was really a happy experience. We always laughed. We kept each other laughing. I never heard any harsh words. He never drank or gambled. He was a dear gentleman."

In 1962 a 19-year-old female singer, who had adored Prima's music since seeing him and Smith perform several years earlier, was hired by Prima to be his vocalist. A year later Gia Maione became the fifth Mrs. Prima.

Gia Prima, who studied music most of her life, was working as a hostess at a Howard Johnson in Camden, N.J., when she auditioned for Prima.

"The very next day I opened at the Basin Street East in New York," she said. "From there it was on to Las Vegas."

Prima's popularity began to decline toward the end of the 1960s as musical tastes changed.

Young people of that era probably knew him best as the voice of King Louie, the Orangutan in Disney's cartoon movie "The Jungle Book." He sang "I Wanna Be Like You" in that movie.

Lena Prima followed her father's footsteps into the entertainment world. Some have called her one of the great undiscovered talents. Born in Las Vegas, Lena's childhood in the '60s was filled with her father's music and his laughter.

"He was always happy, always laughing and joking," she recalls.

He was a devoted father who spent countless hours with her and her brother, Louis Prima Jr., teaching them bits that they occasionally performed on stage, she said.

She was about 5 when her father first took her on stage with him. It instilled in her a love of performing. She begins a week's stint Dec. 27 at the Riviera with a group called the Spiral Staircase.

Lena was 15 when her father died.

She is amazed that his popularity has endured.

"It has never gone away. He has so many fans," she said.

She didn't realize how popular he still is until she sang on a cruise ship about a year ago and her father's name appeared on the marquee introducing her. The crowd was standing room only and when she sang some of her father's songs, she saw "grown men with tears in their eyes," she said.

Louis Prima Jr., 34, who had a rock band called Problem Child from 1988 to 1995, has often thought about capitalizing on the popularity of the latest swing movement, but he is a realist and knows tastes change and that the music industry can be very unstable.

Swing could drop out of favor tomorrow.

Prima Jr. currently manages a fast-food restaurant in North Las Vegas and hopes to work in the hotel-casino industry eventually. But the thought of being a musician is always in the back of his mind, he said.

His father instilled in him the same love for entertaining that his sister feels, but with two sons of his own, he believes the responsible thing to do is pursue his present career.

"I love to entertain. As far back as I can remember my sister and I were up on stage with our father singing," he said.

There were always musical instruments around his home when he was growing up, he said. He learned the piano, drums and trumpet.

He said he likes to cut up on stage like his father.

"That was one of the failures of my rock band," he said. "It was in the middle of grunge rock, and I've never been that depressed. I like to have fun on stage."

In 1996 he and Lena had a swing band, but it went nowhere. "We were about four years ahead of our time," he said.

Even though he loves to entertain, he doesn't have the same passion his sister has and his father had, he said.

Being constantly on the road is a grueling ordeal, he said, and his father never tired of it or complained. "You go on the road not for the love of the money, but for the love of the art." he said.

His father was the ultimate showman, he said. "The man put on a show for the crowd, even if there was only one person in the audience. He put on a show because he loved to entertain."

He resents people who try to belittle his father.

"It is frustrating to be a family member who knows the truth and to hear all the lies and misinformation," he said.

In addition to changing tastes in music, the changing face of the power structure in Las Vegas eventually caused Prima to return to New Orleans. His last booking locally was at the Tropicana.

Gia Prima said as corporations took over the casinos, the lounge acts were shut down. "The corporations looked at the bottom line and didn't see a profit with lounges," she said. "They felt they could make more money on sports books.

"When corporations came in, they changed the complexion of the music scene."

The Primas moved to New Orleans in 1970, playing for tourist crowds until he developed a brain tumor in 1975.

Jimmy Vincent visited Prima in the hospital.

He recalled his mentor was very weak, barely able to whisper.

Standing beside his bed, Vincent watched the erratic lines of the heart monitor and, trying to lift Prima's spirt, began humming a tune in time to the heart rhythms.

"What are you doing?" Prima whispered.

"Quiet. I'm singing," Vincent said.

"Jimmy," Prima whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Sing it again."

In October 1975, during surgery, Prima lapsed into a coma from which he would never emerge.

"We had a band ready for him if he came out of it," Vincent said.

Three years later Prima died in a New Orleans nursing home.