Read Online That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas by Tom Clavin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tom Clavin
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, music, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Genres & Styles, Composers & Musicians, Individual Composer & Musician, Pop Vocal
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the concert opened with “Blue Skies” followed by a swing version of the Scottish song “Loch Lomond,” and then “Blue Room” and “Swingtime in the Rockies.” With the crowd shouting and trying to dance in their seats, Goodman abandoned the program and brought out Wilson and Hampton again for numbers by the trio and quartet. Then the entire orchestra returned, and everyone in the hall braced for the grand finale.
Krupa banged away on the tom-tom to launch “Sing, Sing, Sing.” After several minutes of inspired solos and driving ensemble work there was silence, and, thinking the song was over, the audience began applauding. But in the tradition of “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” a tenor saxophone resumed the tune; Krupa performed another solo as did Harry James on trumpet. Then it was Goodman’s turn for a clarinet solo that sounded like a pure stream of consciousness. That was followed by an almost contemplative two-minute piano solo. It concluded with Krupa bashing the cowbells and the band racing to a rousing climax. The entire performance lasted over twelve minutes and left the audience exhausted.
Oddly, the critics of the day were ambivalent about the obviously popular success of the Carnegie Hall show. The opinions of those who attended and heard about it on the jazz grapevine easily won out over the years.
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert
was finally issued in 1950 and “became one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time,” according to Firestone, “and the night of January 16 came to be enshrined as the absolute pinnacle of Benny’s career and one of the truly important landmarks in the whole history of jazz.”
Over the years Goodman would often be referred to as the King of Swing. A big reason for that was the collective memory of “Sing, Sing, Sing” performed by the Benny Goodman Orchestra being one of the watershed moments in American music. To this day there are people surprised to find that Louis Prima, not Goodman, composed it, though in fairness the version performed by Goodman’s band elevated the song to the status of music legend.
What did that Carnegie Hall concert mean for Prima’s career? It validated him as a composer within jazz music circles. A big feather in his cap was that Benny Goodman, the most popular bandleader in the United States (and probably beyond), had chosen the Prima song as a climax to his concerts. And it sure didn’t hurt that he would receive residuals for an enduring classic, though not as much recognition as Goodman.
11
When Louis Prima and his band made their highly publicized comeback in New York and the performance of “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” had audiences swooning in their seats, Dorothy Jacqueline Keely was just short of ten years old. She was born to Howard Keely, a carpenter, and Fanny Stevens on March 9, 1928, in Norfolk, Virginia. (Throughout most of her career, however, her birth year was given as 1932.) The closest Dot, as she was called, came to having musical surroundings was her mother playing the organ in church.
Her parents divorced when she was nine. When her mother remarried, Dot took on the last name of her new stepfather, Jesse Smith, also a carpenter. Dot’s biological father was half-Cherokee and half-Irish, and her grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. Dot was the only daughter out of four children. (Unlike their sister, the brothers would retain their childhood nicknames for the rest of their lives—Dumps, Piggy, and Buster.) The family of six took in laundry to help make ends meet.
“We lived in a very bad section of Norfolk called Atlantic City,” Smith remembered. “When I say bad, I mean every thief, every hooker, every anybody that did anything bad that landed in jail came from this little section of town that I lived in.”
For whatever reason, Dot liked to sing. She performed at social gatherings. One time her mother found her “sleep-singing”:
Krupa banged away on the tom-tom to launch “Sing, Sing, Sing.” After several minutes of inspired solos and driving ensemble work there was silence, and, thinking the song was over, the audience began applauding. But in the tradition of “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” a tenor saxophone resumed the tune; Krupa performed another solo as did Harry James on trumpet. Then it was Goodman’s turn for a clarinet solo that sounded like a pure stream of consciousness. That was followed by an almost contemplative two-minute piano solo. It concluded with Krupa bashing the cowbells and the band racing to a rousing climax. The entire performance lasted over twelve minutes and left the audience exhausted.
Oddly, the critics of the day were ambivalent about the obviously popular success of the Carnegie Hall show. The opinions of those who attended and heard about it on the jazz grapevine easily won out over the years.
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert
was finally issued in 1950 and “became one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time,” according to Firestone, “and the night of January 16 came to be enshrined as the absolute pinnacle of Benny’s career and one of the truly important landmarks in the whole history of jazz.”
Over the years Goodman would often be referred to as the King of Swing. A big reason for that was the collective memory of “Sing, Sing, Sing” performed by the Benny Goodman Orchestra being one of the watershed moments in American music. To this day there are people surprised to find that Louis Prima, not Goodman, composed it, though in fairness the version performed by Goodman’s band elevated the song to the status of music legend.
What did that Carnegie Hall concert mean for Prima’s career? It validated him as a composer within jazz music circles. A big feather in his cap was that Benny Goodman, the most popular bandleader in the United States (and probably beyond), had chosen the Prima song as a climax to his concerts. And it sure didn’t hurt that he would receive residuals for an enduring classic, though not as much recognition as Goodman.
11
When Louis Prima and his band made their highly publicized comeback in New York and the performance of “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” had audiences swooning in their seats, Dorothy Jacqueline Keely was just short of ten years old. She was born to Howard Keely, a carpenter, and Fanny Stevens on March 9, 1928, in Norfolk, Virginia. (Throughout most of her career, however, her birth year was given as 1932.) The closest Dot, as she was called, came to having musical surroundings was her mother playing the organ in church.
Her parents divorced when she was nine. When her mother remarried, Dot took on the last name of her new stepfather, Jesse Smith, also a carpenter. Dot’s biological father was half-Cherokee and half-Irish, and her grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. Dot was the only daughter out of four children. (Unlike their sister, the brothers would retain their childhood nicknames for the rest of their lives—Dumps, Piggy, and Buster.) The family of six took in laundry to help make ends meet.
“We lived in a very bad section of Norfolk called Atlantic City,” Smith remembered. “When I say bad, I mean every thief, every hooker, every anybody that did anything bad that landed in jail came from this little section of town that I lived in.”
For whatever reason, Dot liked to sing. She performed at social gatherings. One time her mother found her “sleep-singing”:
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