East Portland Blog asked me to write about “Supper’s Ready” by Genesis, but my heart really wouldn’t be in it today knowing that this clip of Louis Prima and Keely Smith exists. Prima was a combination Zelig/Lord of Misrule of 20th century music, with a career stretching from Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans to the LA recording studio where he voiced King Louie for Disney’s Jungle Book — with prominent stops in between in New York’s hottest jazz days in the 1920s, the louchest lounges of Las Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s, and, on successive occasions, the marriage altar. One of his wives was singing partner Keely Smith, about whom based on this clip one can only say “Ow.”
This is a performance from 1959 of what Nick Tosches memorably called their “Son of Sam version of ‘That Old Black Magic.'” (And I’d be remiss in not recommending Tosches’s “Unsung Heros of Rock and Roll.” which includes an unforgettable portrait of Prima that, among other things, will forever color your understanding of that Latin phrase “in flagrante delicto.”)
So dig…
…the antics of the bandleader. Factor in Prima on the one hand and Martin and Lewis on the other, and the 1950s suddenly look a lot more lively and unhinged than most of us give it credit for.
… Louis’s outfit. Did khakis ever look so hip?
… that nice Les Paul the guitarist is playing.
… Keely and the fungool gesture she slips into those final “spins” at the end … the fine line between affection and annoyance she negotiates here and must have spent many years dancing across with Prima … the sheen of sweat on her upper lip ….
Ow.
– Tom Fredrickson is the proprietor of the unparalleled music blog, Lost Wax Method.
