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Louis Prima Jr. | |
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| Born | June 16, 1965 |
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| Years active | 1986–present |
| Labels | Warrior/UMD |
| Website | www |
Louis Prima Jr. (born June 16, 1965) [1] is an American jazz singer and the son of Louis Prima.
|
Louis Prima Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 16, 1965 |
| Genres | |
| Occupations |
|
| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Labels | Warrior/UMD |
| Website | www |
Louis Prima Jr. (born June 16, 1965) [1] is an American jazz singer and the son of Louis Prima.
Louis Prima Jr. is the youngest child of musician and entertainer Louis Prima. His mother Gia Maione began performing with his father in 1962. She taught Louis Jr. to play the drums at 5 years old. He grew up on the outskirts of Las Vegas, on his dad's golf course, Fairway to the Stars, and spent two weeks every summer at his grandparents' house in Toms River, New Jersey. His grandfather, Tom Maione, owned the Red Top Bar at Seaside Heights.
When the Prima family moved to New Orleans, he learned piano. His aunt, Sister Mary Ann, taught piano, and he quickly caught on. The family moved into the home that his father built for his mother on Pretty Acres Golf Course in Covington, Louisiana but soon realized the house might need to be razed due to a termite infestation. The family moved back to Las Vegas.
In school, Prima took band class and told his mother he wanted to play trumpet. He continued playing through high school, and cites his band directors Bruce Cullings and William "Mac" McMosley as major influences in his life. They competed in the Heavy Division of the Chaffey Jazz Festival, and they marched in the Fiesta Bowl and Sun Bowl. [2]
After graduating from high school, Prima started college to enter the business world. He landed a good job, with what he believed a future, and dropped out of college after only one semester. Within a year, he found a band that was renamed Problem Child. Problem Child became popular in the local Vegas scene and at several venues in Hollywood. They opened for numerous acts in every genre, from Winger to Savatage.
In 1995, Problem Child disbanded, and Prima shifted his musical focus to his other love, the music and style of his father. Enlisting the talents of his sister Lena, who had long since quit the music business and established herself as a Las Vegas performer, Prima put together a band in his father's mold. With the aid of his father's keyboard player, Bruce Zarka, he assembled a band of some of the top musicians in Vegas. He left the music world and began a career in food and beverage management. He started a family and performed only casually with friends. [2]
For several years Prima juggled the demands of a full-time job, part-time music career, and raising his children. In 2010 at age 44, he quit his lucrative day job. At a stage of life when some performers are hanging up their instruments in favor of more secure employment, Prima, a divorced father of two, gambled on a full-time career bringing his dad's musical style to new generations. "I may be good at management," he said, "but that's not what I was supposed to be doing." [3]
On July 25, 2010, shortly after their performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (a.k.a. Jazz Fest), and in the year his father would have turned 100, Prima, Sarah Spiegel and the Witnesses were present when his father's posthumous star was put on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. [4]
On July 10, 2012 Prima and the Witnesses released their debut album, Return of the Wildest, on Warrior Records/Universal Music Distribution. [5] Touring in support of Return of the Wildest, the band made their national television debut on Access Hollywood Live . [6] Hosts Billy Bush and Kit Hoover had such a good time dancing along with the band that they were asked to return for the hit television show's Christmas special that had guest Henry Winkler jumping out of his seat to join in. [7] Their worldwide tour continued through October 2013, and included a performance at the first BottleRock Napa Valley festival. [8] sharing the bill with Macklemore, Black Keys, Zac Brown Band, and Kings of Leon.
Prima's second album, titled Blow, was recorded at Capitol Records in the same studio where his father and mother recorded.
Louis Leo Prima was an American trumpeter, singer, entertainer, and bandleader. While rooted in New Orleans jazz, swing music, and jump blues, Prima touched on various genres throughout his career: he formed a seven-piece New Orleans–style jazz band in the late 1920s, fronted a swing combo in the 1930s and a big band group in the 1940s, helped to popularize jump blues in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s, and performed frequently as a Vegas lounge act beginning in the 1950s.
Pierre Dewey LaFontaine Jr., known professionally as Pete Fountain, was an American jazz clarinetist.
King Louie is a fictional character introduced in Walt Disney's animated musical film The Jungle Book. He is an orangutan who leads other jungle primates and wants to become more human-like by gaining knowledge of fire from Mowgli. King Louie is an original character not featured in Rudyard Kipling's original works.
Dorothy Jacqueline Keely, professionally known as Keely Smith, was an American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo artist.
Joseph Matthews "Wingy" Manone was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, singer, and bandleader. His recordings included "Tar Paper Stomp", "Nickel in the Slot", "Downright Disgusted Blues", "There'll Come a Time ", and "Tailgate Ramble".
Armando Joseph "Buddy" Greco was an American jazz and pop singer and pianist who had a long career in the US and UK. His recordings have sold millions, including "Oh Look A-There Ain't She Pretty", "Up, Up and Away", and "Around the World". His most successful single was "The Lady Is a Tramp", which sold over one million copies. During his career, he recorded over sixty albums. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra and performed for Queen Elizabeth II and with the Beatles.
Louis Joseph Walker Jr., known as Joe Louis Walker, is an American musician, best known as an electric blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer. His knowledge of blues history is revealed by his use of older material and playing styles.
Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. was an American jazz pianist and educator. Active since the late 1940s, Marsalis came to greater attention in the 1980s and 1990s as the patriarch of the musical Marsalis family, when sons Branford and Wynton became popular jazz musicians.
Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos, known professionally as Criss Angel, is an American magician, illusionist and musician. He is often referred to as one of the world's most successful illusionists, generating in excess of $150 million in tourism revenue for Las Vegas in one year.
"Just a Gigolo" is a popular song, adapted by Irving Caesar into English in 1929 from the Austrian tango "Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo", composed in 1928 in Vienna by Leonello Casucci to lyrics written in 1924 by Julius Brammer.
Gia Maione Prima was an American singer and the fifth wife of musician/entertainer Louis Prima.
Sam Butera was an American tenor saxophonist and singer best noted for his collaborations with Louis Prima and Keely Smith. Butera is frequently regarded as a crossover artist who performed with equal ease in both R&B and the post-big band pop style of jazz that permeated the early Vegas nightclub scene.
Troy Andrews, also known by the stage name Trombone Shorty, is a musician, most notably a trombone player, from New Orleans, Louisiana. His music fuses rock, pop, jazz, funk, and hip hop.
"Basin Street Blues" is a song often performed by Dixieland jazz bands, written by Spencer Williams in 1928 and recorded that year by Louis Armstrong. The verse with the lyric "Won't you come along with me / To the Mississippi..." was later added by Glenn Miller and Jack Teagarden.
The Wildest! is an album by Louis Prima, first released in 1956. It features singer Keely Smith with saxophonist Sam Butera and the Witnesses. It is considered an innovative mixture of early rock and roll, jump blues and jazz as well as eccentric humor.
George Schlatter is an American television producer and director, best known for Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, founder of the American Comedy Awards, and author of Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy.
Lou Sino was a New Orleans trombonist and singer who came to prominence as a member of Louis Prima's backing band The Witnesses, led by Sam Butera. He also released a number of his own recordings with his band The Bengals.
Sarah Spiegel is an American singer and actress who specializes in the Great American Songbook style. She toured for years with the Louis Prima Jr. band, Louis Prima Jr. and the Witnesses, and now performs as a solo artist in concerts and recordings. She has appeared as an actress in television shows such as NCIS, King of Queens, and Boston Public.
Lena Prima is an American jazz singer. She is the daughter of singer, trumpeter and recording star Louis Prima and his fifth wife, Gia Maione.
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