The year 2010 marks the centennial of Louis Prima’s birth.

The legendary showman was born Dec. 7, 1910 in New Orleans, the city where he died in 1978 after three years in a coma.

New Orleans plans a major celebration honoring Prima.

So far, his adopted city of Las Vegas has nothing planned.

A tribute will be paid to the “King of Las Vegas” during the 14th annual New Orleans International Music Colloquium during the French Quarter Festival 2010.

The Prima 100th birthday tributes will take place at the Historic New Orleans Collection, 533 Royal Street, in the heart of the French Quarter.

The colloquium on Prima will feature discussions about his life and career and old film and movie clips of his performances will be screened.

Family members – including daughter Lena Prima and son Louis Prima Jr. – will be on hand to relate firsthand experiences with him and there will be performances of some of his best-known music.

Lena and Louis are the children of Louis Prima and his fifth wife, Gia Maione, whom he married after divorcing Keely Smith.

Smith reportedly will be on hand for the celebration.

She told me in an interview for the Las Vegas Sun in 1999 that their 1961 divorce was a stormy one, but when he 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.”

In a prepared statement by the Festival organizers, Prima was described as “much more than just a trumpet player and singer. He was a musical pioneer and Renaissance Man. In addition to being a trumpeter and singer, he was also a songwriter, composer, arranger, tireless entertainer, showman and “pitch man” for his Italian heritage and his beloved hometown of New Orleans. His half-century in the entertainment business transcended three or four generations of musical eras and he fit neatly into each one, constantly reinventing himself to adapt to prevailing musical trends.”

In the 1930s, Prima wrote “Sing Sing Sing,” which went on to become the national anthem of the Swing Era. Benny Goodman’s performance of it at his landmark 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall, featuring Gene Krupa’s legendary drum solo, firmly and finally established jazz as an accepted American musical art form. Prima also co-wrote “Sunday Kind of Love,” which became the most widely recorded single of the 1950s Rhythm & Blues/Doo Wop era.

However, said the Jazz officials, t was as a performer that Prima really made his mark. Las Vegas was a small, relatively new entity on the map when he debuted in the nightclubs of the casinos along the glittering “Strip.” Setting the standard for outstanding showmanship, he raised the “club act” to new levels and heights. Doing five shows a night, a pace almost unheard of today, his performances drew millions of people – including the Who’s Who of Hollywood during his long reign as “The King of Vegas.” One of the highlights of any given show was when he and members of his band walked off the stage and paraded through the audience in New Orleans brass band second-line style, interacting and connecting with those who had come to hear them.

Singing memorable duets with wives Keely Smith and Gia Maione, Prima pioneered in the male-female duet genre, soon thereafter popularized by Sonny & Cher and other singing couples. The Prima-Smith collaboration on “That Old Black Magic” in 1958 won them the first-ever Grammy Award for a musical duet. His clowning and playful banter with bandleader and saxophonist Sam Butera, a fellow New Orleanian, set the precedent for Johnny Carson’s later interactions with bandleader Doc Severinson on the Tonight Show and David Letterman’s interactions with his bandleader, Paul Shaffer.

by Jerry Fink
thejerryfink.com