Tracks: Just a Gigolo; I Ain't Got Nobody (Medley)//(Nothing's Too Good) For My Baby//The Lip//Body and Soul//Oh Marie//Basin Street Blues; When It's Sleepy Time Down South (Medley)//Jump, Jive an' Wail//Buona Sera//Night Train//(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You
Well this is a fun album! It’s all very silly of course, but it’s a catchy mix of early rock with good old fashion swing and New Orleans jazz. And it makes sense, doesn’t it – I mean, at this point all three of those things sounded suspiciously similar anyway, so hey, why not mix them up?
Louis Prima is comparable on all fronts to Louis Armstrong, right down to the name. His voice is obviously modelled very heavily on Armstrong, including the deep gravely quality and his frequent explosions into bursts of scat singing and silly repartee with the sidemen. He’s even from New Orleans! Which perhaps validates his style at least a little – although, Armstrong developed a lot of his signature stuff working the clubs in Chicago.
So, is this particularly mind-blowing? No, not really. But it is a great deal of fun, with marvellously polished performances and the rock influences integrated very nicely. Despite being the sort of cheesy old-fashioned swinger’s album that people love to dismiss, it’s actually relatively tasteful in trying to stay relevant. This is something to be thankful for, since it means that this album is fun to laugh along with, instead of at. Most of the songs are as much comedy routine as actual musical piece. “The Lip”, for example, sees songstress Keely Smith tell the story of the world’s greatest trumpeter (they call him the Lip) while each of the band mates pipes in with a guess about his identity, and Prima shares a recipe for a patented lip loosener made out of steam and fried eggs.
Elsewhere, you get the sort of sung verse/chorus/chorus compositions that are the bread and butter of this sort of blues-based stuff. It makes sense, of course, when your trumpeter is also you lead singer. The mid-way medley has some quite fine playing, for example. And then you have “Jump, Jive an’ Wail!” which is a full-on rock/r&b number that wouldn’t be at all out of place on a Ray Charles album. The horn stabs and a strong backing chorus really sell this. One great thing about Louis Prima is that, given that he’s a jazz performer, he has a much, much stronger understanding of rhythm than a lot of the guys coming out of a country background, and a technical and production sheen that Elvis’ debut, for example, could never have hoped to match – although many would argue that such very rawness and imperfection was Elvis’ chief virtue. In any event, as a consequence of his background we have an excellent dance album here, one that would have worked ten years earlier and is still fun today.
So, you can’t really deny that this was an incredibly cheesy album even when it first came out. A lot of people see the fifties as a mystical wonderland where Rock rose up and banish the horrible spectre of crap old people’s music, as of course nothing other than rock music is worth listening to. Those people, mostly teenagers, shit me. This is a big-slice of self-consciously goofy nonsense. It plays very heavily to the Italian crowd with songs like “Just a Gigolo” and “Buena Sera”, but hey, it’s Louis Prima. This is the sort of stuff that you’d expect to hear in a party scene in Goodfellas or The Godfather, after all. But, nonetheless, it’s really good. There’s nothing ironic in my enjoyment of this. It’s a big, joyous lump of corny fun.
In comparison to the previous two albums this is positively lavish sounding, although it’s still just a band in a recording studio with a very “live” feel. The personnel is obvious rather small (only 8 people – no Ellingtonian excesses here), but the sound is full and everything is nicely miked. Keely Smith has a wonderful, rich voice, although unfortunately she only sings lead on “The Lip”. She sings lead on “The Lip” and it’s arguably the best song! Why no more lead vocals for Ms. Smith, Mr. Prima? Well, that’s ok – you’ve got a fine voice too.
Anyway, the album closes with the one-two punch of the blues standard “Night Train” (fine, but not about to knock James Brown’s version off the top) and “(I’ll Be Glad When Your Dead) You Rascal”, which incorporates “When the Saints Come Marching In” into the solos on the chorus. And then the trumpet and sax start doing long siren calls! It’s quite neat. There’s a very even mix of rock, jazz and pop here, with a decent level of energy sustained throughout. You could dance to it, but you could also sit around talking and drinking.
And in the end, isn’t that what this is about? I may seem like an idiot for thinking that Louis Prima made a better rock album than Elvis Presley, but come-on, man! This is fine cocktail stuff! Prima claims to have wanted to capture the feel of 3 AM at the Sands, and damn it he did it! I wish there were more of this on this list. Can you believe, not a single proper exotica album? Ritual of the Savage came out in 1951! That’s a fully-realised concept album a whole four years before Sinatra! Hypnotique is utterly gorgeous and influenced the entire 90s post-rock scene. And where the hell is my Julie London? Maybe she’s no Ella Fitzgerald, but she cut albums at least as good as Prima. I guess maybe this list needs a little more novelty? Sabu doesn’t count – that’s at least vaguely authentic.
Anyway, I really like this. It’s fun and unassuming and I feel absolutely no shame in embracing it. You can see its fingerprints on everything from the 90s zoot suit revival to early Serge Gainsbourg-penned ye-ye numbers. It’s not cheesy! It’s cool. And next time I’m in Lygon Street I can strike-up a conversation with one of the mob bosses about good old Louis. I can never hope to be a made man, but I might get to see a man made-a-dade-a-doodooz-oodle zappity zippity boo.
7.5/10
Louis Prima - The Lip.mp3
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