Years before Mick Jagger strutted, swaggered, and danced his way into entertainment history, a proud performer named Prima pranced like a peacock across every stage in Vegas and America. Louis Prima's career spanned five decades, significantly longer than that of his jazz and swing contemporaries, with whom he had first helped change the musical world in the 1930s. And, as it happens, Louis was still at it in the '60s and '70s, pleasing audiences at least a dozen years into Mick and the Stones' heyday.

That was as it should be. Louis Prima had helped to invent rock and roll-not that he had ever become a part of its youthful community. His mindset was bigger than that: musical categories didn't matter, and his community included anyone who wanted to have a good time, listening to his joyful, swinging sounds. And like Mr. Jagger, Prima's youthful exuberance had nothing to do with age, and everything to do with fun.

Louis Prima's best-known work came from the 1950s, but his musical contribution was significant long before and long after his enduring hit, "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody." His music and sound evolved with the times, but every recording, from his first in 1934 to his last in 1975, bore his unmistakable mark.

At a time when singers and swingers from the pre-Beatles days were summarily dismissed from record labels in favor of more mop-topped acts, the forward-looking Prima began putting out records on his own label. Big-label shutout would not impede his entrepreneurial spirit and determination to make albums to accompany his still-legendary performances. Those recordings from the '60s and '70s were rare even upon their release (being only available at the shows, without wide distribution). Now, some three decades later, nine of them have been released on CD, further documenting the musical prowess of this unique entertainer. Each has been digitally restored and features reproductions of the original classic artwork indicative of that period in music and in Prima's career.

SWINGIN' IN THE BEGINNIN'

Louis Prima was born, appropriately enough, in the Southern jazz home of New Orleans in 1910, a first generation American with Italian immigrant parents. He and his brother Leon showed early interest in the music of their culturally rich town, both taking up the trumpet as kids. Louis was hard at work playing locally in the clubs by the early '30s. By 1934, he had already made it up to New York leading his own band, featured regularly at the fittingly named Famous Door on 52nd Street. With his New Orleans Gang, he brought a raucous Dixieland sound into the more sophisticated New York jazz scene, but it was his personal onstage antics that truly set him apart. As his friendly and animated manner evolved, so did his band, into the Big Band arrangements that were quickly becoming all the rage. By the turn of the decade, he'd penned the most famous song of the Big Band Era, "Sing Sing Sing," recorded by Benny Goodman, and he had moved on to fronting a full orchestra.

Through each incarnation, the party-oriented shows were a constant, as was his sense of humor. It was his calling card, and a function of who he was as a human being. The songs were often funny, just like the man onstage singing them, but this was no novelty act. Prima was an excellent trumpeter, and he surrounded himself with equally gifted musicians.

Like the other trumpet-playing Louis from New Orleans, Prima's raspy, unpolished voice set him apart from everyone else. He sang with carefree abandon, as though it were just something a bandleader needed to be able to do, but that voice was where the audience found his charm, his personality. "If I could only sing like Bing, Man, I could really swing," Prima would later sing in "I've Got The World On A String," but the fact was that he could always swing better than Bing Crosby, the smooth crooner. Listening to a scat-singing wild man sing and play "Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue" was the best distraction imaginable during the years following the Second World War. It was a time for fun, and who better to listen to than the man who always seemed to be having a ball?

By 1952, Louis moved into a format that rocked and rolled several years ahead of its time, when he ventured into a new type of swinging sound, thanks to a talented young saxophonist named Sam Butera who fronted a hot combo called the Nighttrainers, renamed The Witnesses by Louis. (Had he not already been making records for twenty years, would Prima's Witnesses incarnation have truly been categorized as Rock and Roll, a genre with which he had more musical common ground?) In Butera, Prima found a grinning showman and spiritual peer, along with a perfectly suited smaller band with a bigger, newer sound than any orchestra. When an attractive young smoky-voiced chanteuse was incorporated into the new venture, Prima was onto something. Keely Smith became a deadpan, poker-faced foil onstage. She also became Mrs. Prima Number Four.

The rest of that decade was filled with film, stage, and radio success for Prima and his merry entourage. Hit duets with Smith were visible and memorable, but as the Fifties closed, so did the heyday for the swing generation-along with the Prima/Smith marriage and musical partnership.

ROCKING AND ROLLING THROUGH THE AGE OF ROCK AND ROLL

By the early 1960s, record companies had new priorities. "If you didn't sing with a British accent or come from England, you were on the backburner, and that included Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, all of us," remembers Gia Prima, the young singer who, as Gia Maione, performed with her husband from 1962 until the end of his career. Recording trends would not slow down a musical pro like Louis Prima. He may have passed 50, but he had no intention of quitting the job he loved so much. It was more than a job; it was who he was. "Louis got kind of upset, he didn't want that kind of a lull in his career," says Gia. "So he decided to form his own record company, which he did, right in our home in Vegas.

"He built a beautiful recording studio, and we did our own recording. He sold them mainly at live performances after each show. And he started a record club. Wherever we'd perform, he'd put a little table in so people could put their name and address and they'd get a mailing list of what was new and available and they could purchase it through the record club. Because of the British Invasion, you couldn't get distribution unless you were going to be one of the new groups, the Dave Clark Five and the Stones and whoever else. So that was the only way they were available." Louis called the label Prima One Magnagroove Records. He said at the time that "the music we're going to put out on this record label is in a large groove."

Now, with their CD release, the Prima One albums document an important period in Prima's career, a time in which he continued adapting his sound, and having every bit as much fun as he'd had back in the day.

Sam Butera and his Witnesses shared Prima's vision, by reinventing their sound along the way while retaining the very enthusiasm that had made them special to begin with. The inclusion of a Hammond B3 organ had a lot to do with the evolution, but Sam and company were already ahead of the times in the 1950s, featuring a rock and roll electric guitar before Chuck Berry discovered its power to change the world.

Prima had always made music of rhythm. With Sam's crew along for the ride, there was no reason to stop. And sticking with the Chief after the Smith years was a career decision that Butera had no hesitance making.

Gia also happened to be about three decades younger than her otherwise youthful husband, so she was able to bring a younger person's musical point of view to the age-ain't-nothin'-but-a-number Prima Sound. "All of us did. The younger members, we wanted to do something that was hot and today. But we wanted to keep what we had with Louis together. There was always a variety of music. There wouldn't be one person in the audience that didn't like what we played, because we played something from his era as well."

Of course, the greatest factor that kept the recordings vibrant and alive was the spirited exuberance of Louis himself.

SWINGIN' ON STAGE

Louis Prima released dozens of albums and singles in his half-century career, a great many of which were recorded for Capitol Records. For the most part, Capitol has released CDs that are variations on the "best of/compilation" theme, with tracks only from the six-year Keely Smith period.

According to the Bear Family Capitol Prima box set liner notes, Prima's career was, for all intents and purposes, over after his divorce from Keely Smith. The scarcity of the Prima One Magnagroove label LPs presumably created this misconception, as many fans have been unaware of their existence until now. But the box set notes even go farther than that, by declaring that, after years of legendary lounge and casino appearances, Prima was reduced to scrounging for gigs in bowling alleys. "The Copa, the Sands Hotel, the Sahara, the Hilton, the Tropicana, Ben Maksik's Town and Country, the Palmer House in Chicago are not bowling alleys," Gia declares. "He didn't work any bowling alleys."

In fact, if anything, the energy and thrill of a Prima/Witnesses show had tightened into a better performance. The show was what mattered the most to Louis, and he knew that connecting with his audience was what made the show. "Louis always felt, while he was performing, that there was a bigger show while he was watching the audience's response to him than he thought that the audience was seeing," remembers Gia. "He loved intimacy, he loved to see every single person's face. The largest he really liked was a room that seated between three and five hundred people. Anything larger than that, he didn't like the cold feeling because you couldn't see anyone." The first releases on Prima's label were two live albums, which made perfect souvenirs for buying in the lobby right after seeing the still vital Prima jumping, jiving, and wailing on stage through his rocking show.

The live album recorded at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, wasn't named The King Of Clubs for ego's sake. It was simply true. The Prima/Maione/Witnesses shows really were widely known as one of the best attractions to experience in Tahoe, Vegas, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, or wherever the road took them. The shows were legendary for their improvised hilarity between, and during, songs. A Prima show was a non-stop wild, musical roller coaster ride.

Like the music of Bob Wills (something of a Western Prima counterpart, who dominated dance halls in rural and Southwest America during the same years), it was always more about the show than chart-topping record success.

The live recordings also displayed another characteristic that the King of Club Swing shared with the King of Western Swing: Both men were the charismatic leaders of the show, but they were democratic in sharing the spotlight with everyone else on stage. Prima might sing one song, Gia, the next, Butera, the one after that. And then a Witness, like Lou Sino on trumpet, would improvise all the way through an instrumental. Each individual's talent was presented, making for a well-rounded showcase of everybody on the stage-and everyone rallied behind each other's moment up front. Throughout all of it, Louis was the natural showman who led the laughter and frenetic activity from start to finish.

The other live album from the early '60s, Prima Show In The Casbar, was recorded at the Sahara Hotel in Vegas, where one night, as Gia Prima recalls, her intuitive husband demonstrated his strong understanding of the audience before him: "The first thing he would do, he would make eye contact with that opening song, with everyone in the audience, so he could evaluate in his mind their age, what they would like, because we never did set shows, ever. Louis never decided what we were going to do until he got out there and could see the audience. And this one night, he's opening with 'When You're Smiling.' When it was over there was kind of this dull applause. And he didn't like that. So he looked at everybody and he said, 'Let's try it again. Bring the curtain down!' so they brought the curtain down and did the same thing all over again. By the time he finished doing 'When You're Smiling' the second time, the audience was tapping their feet and laughing and carrying on, the way they should."

THIS IS GIA

Louis had always been secure in himself, as a person and as a performer, and he was, once again, happy to support every creative venture of the people in his inner musical circle. Sam Butera and the Witnesses were releasing their own albums, including a stellar recording with the other wildest man in music, Sammy Davis, Jr.

He also wanted to support the career of his singing partner and life partner, Gia Maione. This Is Gia displayed the vocal talents of Mrs. Prima, this time backed by an orchestra instead of the big sound of the Prima Show experience. Her take on standards like "The Man I Love" and "My Funny Valentine" showed that she was not a Keely imitator, but a Broadway-styled singer with her own special touch.

Gia had become an important player in the mix in every way by this time, and her association had always seemed that it were meant to be. She had quite literally been a Louis Prima fan her entire life, and their paths had crossed several times in her own youth.

At 14, she was thrilled to meet the star and get his autograph. She's carried it in her purse ever since. "While other kids were listening to Elvis, I'm in my room listening to Louis. Even in the variety shows in school, I would always perform Louis' songs. 'Sunny Side Of The Street' stands out because the principal wrote my parents a letter after that performance, [saying] that someday I was destined to be a star. I still have that letter. There was a time that he was traveling from Florida to New York, to play the Copacabana. I was around 16 years old. I lived on the Barnegat Bay; there's a big inlet at the Barnegat right there. Louis was on a yacht traveling from Florida to New York, and his yacht broke down. My dad was an avid fisherman, and he had ship-to-shore [communication]. He heard on ship-to-shore that Louis Prima and his yacht were being towed in to Barnegat Inlet. We lived four or five blocks away, and I ran those four or five blocks just to get a glimpse of the boat as they were towing it for repair. So our lives touched there."

When she learned several years later that he was looking for a new female singer the year after the Smith breakup, Maione was ready for her audition. Things happened very quickly after the young woman got the job, and she found herself almost immediately on the most important stage in America, that of the live Ed Sullivan television show.

Things also happened quickly for their personal relationship, which developed simultaneously and naturally with the professional bond. It made sense that way in Louis' life: the personal and professional incarnations of Louis Prima had always been one and the same. Being him was a full time showbiz job. As for Gia, "I don't know where idolatry left and love began. All I know is I felt within myself that this was destiny."

She remembers life with Louis with the same sense of wonder. "This is probably going to sound mushy, but if you would interview our children they would say the same thing: Life with Louis every day, you woke up with a smile on your face. His presence in the house was so overwhelming. And the lovable teddy bear guy that you saw on stage was this lovable guy at home. We never had harsh words, always laughing, playing bits on each other to make each other laugh.

"He was a hard worker, he got up early in the morning. And gave instructions to the work crew at the golf course in Vegas first thing, went to the office second thing, he had his lunch, then he liked to play at least nine holes of golf. He'd play with either celebrities that were in town in Vegas, or Sam and Rolly and Jimmy [from the Witnesses], and he'd come home and his dinner was always five o'clock. It had to be five o'clock. He had to take his nap and then go showbiz. So at five o'clock, quarter of five, there'd be a knock on the door and it might be Tony Bennett, because he knew Louis always ate at five o'clock. And of course I could cook all the Italian food being from an Italian family. Louis loved the food. In fact, when I first fixed him mostacciole he said, 'You got the job!' He loved his food."

SWINGIN' IN THE STUDIO

The Magnagroove recordings dig much deeper into the Prima catalogue, revealing more layers to the creativity and interpretive genius of the wildest clan in jazz, swing, and pop.

Sam's Witnesses and Louis stayed true to their musical selves, but they were keeping up with the times by putting the electric organ and electric guitar up front on some of the studio tracks, creating a funky sound with one foot in their beloved New Orleans and another in the groover's paradise of a younger generation. They could and would cover everything from Cole Porter to The Beatles, and even recorded an instrumental version of the Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil." These really were The New Sounds Of The Louis Prima Show, an album on which Louis swings "Cold, Cold Heart" in a way the high and lonesome Hank Williams could never have envisioned, and Butera turns in a gripping sax solo for the film theme, "Exodus." (By the way, the cover art for the album is indicative of another Prima innovation: With his palms to the sky, Louis is seen "raisin' the roof" with his hands in 1969, before most of today's rappers were even born.)

Ron Cannatella, a musician, archivist, and historian who has worked with Mrs. Prima on preserving and releasing these recordings, recounts some thoughts his mentor and friend Perry Como had of one of the later Prima tracks: "Back in the early '90s, something came up about Louis Prima in one of our conversations, and Mr. C said, 'He ran into me in Vegas.' They saw each other and Louis gave him the record of The Prima Generation '72 because it had 'It's Impossible.' He must have wanted Perry to have it. Mr. C said, 'He gave that to me and said "Wait 'til you hear this; I did one of your songs!"' Mr. C said, 'When I listened to it, it just knocked me out; it was wild! Certainly, he must take my record and listen to that when he wants to relax, and then I can play that one when I want to wake up and jump around!' He got a big kick out of it. And of course, he added, 'We Italians stick together!'"

Throughout his career, Prima had always embraced his own Italian ethnicity, playing off of it with humor, by making references to food and singing in Italian whenever it made sense. Managing his own recording career afforded him the opportunity to record nothing but the most overt Italian songs, an album named not only for one of those songs, but also for his beloved mother of the same name.

It was also on that album that Louis recorded the definitive version of "Che La Luna" a song that he'd released in many incarnations prior to that time. Louis' earlier versions of this Sicilian folk song were as part of a medley with "Angelina," as "Zooma Zooma" with Smith, and even as "Oh Mama Twist" for a 1961 movie in which he starred called Twist All Night. Cannatella tells the fascinating story of the song's greater significance in the Italian-American community: "He sings it straight out, but then there's some special lyrics that he put in there. He's singing it as a girl, he's doing the dialogue between the daughter and the mother about marrying different guys; he's saying it about a wedding. 'Mama dear, come over here and see who's looking in the window, it's the baker boy…If you marry the baker boy, he will come and he will go...' So that's the only time he ever did those lyrics to the song. He plays out the whole thing, and of course you've got Sam Butera and The Witnesses just clapping and playing their horns in the background and it's a really big celebration. You can hear it on the record. From the time that that was recorded in the 1970s, it became huge at big Italian festivals and parades. They would dance in the streets to this song. And they still do. Every March 19, when the Italian-American Marching Club in New Orleans [marches] for their big Italian American parade, that's the version of 'Che La Luna' that plays from the big loudspeakers. They dance in the streets. There were several record dealers here in town that used to sell copies of the 45 of that song. There was even a guy who used to offer just a tape of that version of it for people because everybody wanted that played at their wedding. Here in town [New Orleans], that's a huge song and of course with the Italian communities in other areas, the same thing happened. This is the definitive version of that song."

Prima knew no other way of interpreting love songs than with frivolity and unapologetic happiness. Having a blast seemed to be the only way he could take on a melodic song like, say, "Pennies From Heaven" or "As Time Goes By." Life was serious enough already, and besides, wasn't love supposed to be something worth being happy about? There was a certain novelty to a Prima song interpretation, but not in the Spike Jones, satirical sense.

The Golden Hits Of Louis Prima allowed him the chance to revisit some of his best-known hits, with new takes and twists to give them a new meaning. With Gia by his side, he was able to prove that he could still find "That Old Black Magic" with a vocalist and partner other than the previous Mrs. Prima. "Civilization" had been merely a laugh, a funny song with funny words in the 1937 recording, but the new version somehow had more meaning. Sure, it was still great fun. But now a 55-year-old man, one who had already found success by avoiding a day job and making a career of being happy, sang the song. With his gloriously graveled voice, our hero finds the secret of life far away from conventional civilization, seen through the eyes of an African native: "Bongo bongo bongo, I don't want to leave the Congo, Oh no no no no / Bingle bangle bungle, I'm so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go / Don't want no penthouse, bathtub, streetcars, taxis, noise in my ear / So no matter how they coax me, I'll stay right here."

I WANNA BE LIKE YOU

"Civilization" was not Louis' last safari. It was another song that would take him deeper into the jungle, and into the imagination of children for generations to come.

In 1966, Walt Disney invited Louis to participate in a project for which he was perfectly suited. With his vivacious and rough-edged voice, he was a shoe in for bringing life to King Louis the orangutan in the animated Disney feature film, The Jungle Book. He had scored a similar gig the same year with Hanna-Barbera, reaching the same new audience when he became the singing voice of Fred Flintstone for the feature film, A Man Called Flintstone.

But it was as King Louis that Prima left his indelible comical mark on popular culture, singing the best-loved and remembered song from the timeless kids' classic, "I Wanna Be Like You." And only a character as animated as the real Louis Prima could find a way to actually appear in a fully animated movie-sort of. Louis and Sam and all the Witnesses had always moved with such frenetic energy in their live performances that the folks at Disney made the wise choice to convert this real-life animation into movie animation. The entire group was brought in to the Disney studios to spend an afternoon performing so that the film's animators could study their movements. The animators could then ensure that the cartoon orangutan and other jungle characters could move around with the same infectious groove.

"For every child that's born every day, somewhere, their parents are going to buy the Disney video of the Jungle Book," notes Gia. "So every age group, they may not know who Louis Prima was, but when I tell the young people, 'When you were a young kid a few years ago, did you see Jungle Book?' They say, 'Yes.' 'What about King Louis, did you love that?' 'It's my favorite song!' So they all know him."

ADMIRERS AND ADVERTISERS: THE LOUIS LEGACY

There are other ways beyond the Disney film that have kept Prima's work alive in popular artistic culture. In the 1970s, Sonny and Cher enjoyed great musical comedy success, having modeled their between-song banter after a style first invented by Louis and Keely Smith. "Sing Sing Sing" was placed in the Grammy Hall Of Fame, and Louis' composition, "A Sunday Kind Of Love," has also been recorded many times by a variety of artists. In fact, it was a charted hit in four different decades, each time in a different musical genre: Fran Warren's big band version, The Harp Tones in doo-wop, Etta James in the blues, and Reba McEntire, country.

In his first solo musical venture apart from Van Halen in the 1980s, David Lee Roth was so aware of his similar sense of showmanship to Louis, that he recorded a version of "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody" that was virtually identical to the original. He knew it and acknowledged the note-for-note rendition, giving due credit to his inspiration.

The lounge music craze of the 1990s revived interest in all of Louis' Italian singer peers, Sinatra, Bennett, and Dean Martin among them. Louis got the most visible revival of all of them though, when his classic, "Jump, Jive, And Wail," became the track for a Gap stores television commercial. The Brian Setzer Orchestra version was so faithful to the original that most people didn't even realize that the TV commercial was not the Setzer version. The former Stray Cat enjoyed a huge hit and even a Grammy from the track for which he owes Mr. Prima a rather huge debt of gratitude.

Louis' own daughter has kept his music alive in a tangible way that would've made dad proud: by performing onstage in Vegas. Lena Prima is a lounge singer in her own right, whose live show incorporates the great songs of her legendary father.

I'M LEAVING YOU

Louis Prima, Gia Maione, Sam Butera, and the Witnesses appeared on many television variety shows during the '60s and '70s, including Mike Douglas, The Tonight Show, Merv Griffin, Bob Hope specials, and others. But mostly, they stayed on stage, in Vegas and on the road, drawing an audience to witness their musical mayhem and hilarity throughout the 1960s and as much of the '70s as Louis' health would allow. Having come from something of a hedonistic, drinking, smoking, partying lounge music period, Louis had always avoided the trappings that characterized those days and that musical culture. Unlike a number of his peers, Prima had always been athletic, energetic, and healthy. He had to be; how else could he have pulled off such physically demanding dancing, singing, playing, and swinging onstage?

When he was overcome by debilitating headaches, he learned of a tumor near his brain stem. Though it would later be revealed as benign, it had to be removed to relieve the excruciating pain. As a direct result of the surgery itself, Louis Prima went into a coma in 1975, in which he would remain until his death in 1978.

He had kept his sunny disposition in the entirety of his live and recorded work from 1934 until 1975. "The thing that I miss the most is his sense of humor," remembers Gia. "I don't see anyone today that has that kind of sense of humor. You read that he was sullen, [but] he was never sullen, never."

The last song he recorded was uncharacteristically blue and sadly prophetic. The mournful "I'm Leaving You" was sung with haunting sincerity and seriousness. Aside from being a profoundly beautiful and moving recording, it also displayed the earnest vocal ability of the most fun-loving singer in the business. Prima's friend, Floyd Huddleston, who had written a number of songs a few years earlier for a Prima concept album called Let's Hear It For Robin Hood, had written the song. That collectible album had been recorded for Disney to coincide with their animated Robin Hood movie (though the Prima tracks did not appear in the film itself).

But it was another track recorded a few years earlier that had captured everything in the spirit of the exuberant singer. The slowed down "Gigolo" from the 1973 album of the same name, had a jazzier vocal with classy tenor sax and trumpet solos. It stood on its own this time, without its perennial medley companion, "I Ain't Got Nobody."

With this finest version of his trademark song, Louis Prima proved once and for all that this had never been a novelty song or act. There were no voices this time chanting "gigolo" in the background as there had always been. This was a more reflective Louis singing, but he was still happy. He was always happy. And he made sure his listeners felt the same. They always had, every time he sang the chorus to "Gigolo," the last line of which would be etched directly onto his headstone:

"There will come a day when youth will pass away, what will they say about me? When the end comes I know, they'll say "just a gigolo," As life goes on without me."



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