Condition: Jacket VG++, Vinyl VG+

Offered here is a fabulous self produced late 1960s era LP by the great Louis Prima. This record was produced on Prima’s own “Prima Records” label in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is long out of print.

Louis Prima has signed on the back cover portrait – definitely suitable for framing!

The signed back cover:

And here’s the extremely cool front cover:

NOTE: The recordings on this LP were newly recorded in the 1970s and not simple reissues of the Capitol tracks.

Here’s what it says in the ultra hip liner notes from the back cover:
Headed by Just A Gigolo, one of the most popular of all the LOUIS PRIMA hits, the theme of this album is dedicated to all the beautiful ladies and the beautiful songs bearing their names. These new PRIMA sounds are reminiscent of an old fashioned jam session, whereby LOUIS sings his heart out, while SAM BUTERA furnishes the counter solos and accompaniment, as only the “nation’s number one sax man” can. Play this disc over and over and pick up on these PRIMA shenanigans and the truly great creative activities of “Sam the Man”. When LOUIS breathes in – SAM blows out – and brother that’s heavy stuff. In any event, warm up your feet and leg muscles, because once you lay the needle down, you won’t be able to control the locomotion!

The tracks are:
1. Just a Gigolo
2. Illya Darling
3. Cecelia
4. Judy
5. Margie
6. Caldonia
7. Hello Dolly
8. Rosalie
9. Joanna
10. Sugar

From the All Music Guide:

Louis Prima:
A tireless showman and an underrated musical talent, Louis Prima swung his way to icon status thanks to an irresistible, infectious sound whose appeal translated across generations. Nominally a swing artist, Prima's distinctive sound also encompassed New Orleans-style jazz, boogie-woogie, jump blues, R&B, early rock & roll, and even the occasional Italian tarantella. Regardless of what form his music took, it swung hard and fast, with a rolling, up-tempo shuffle beat that helped some of his earlier material cross over to R&B audiences (his songs were also covered by jump blues artists from time to time). His greatest period of popularity coincided with his marriage to singer Keely Smith, whose coolly sophisticated vocals and detached stage manner made a perfect counterpoint to Prima's boisterous presence: mugging, clowning, and cavorting around the stage with the boundless enthusiasm of a hyperactive boy. Prima's band during this time was anchored by tenor saxophonist Sam Butera, whose grounding in jump blues and New Orleans R&B was a perfect match. Perhaps because Prima refused to take his music too seriously, sober-minded jazz critics often dismissed him as a mere entertainer, overlooking his very real talent as a jazzman. He was a capable, gravelly-voiced singer modeled on Louis Armstrong, boasting a surprising range, and was also a fine trumpet player, again in the irrepressible mold of Armstrong; what was more, he wrote Benny Goodman's perennial swing smash "Sing, Sing, Sing." Prima's impact on popular culture was also significant; his pronounced ethnicity made it safe for other Italian-American singers to acknowledge their roots, and he was the first high-profile musical act to take up regular residence in the lounges and casinos of Las Vegas, helping to start the city's transformation into a broader-based entertainment capital.

newitem19011548$125.00

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Quotes:

"Louis Maistros has written a lyrical, complex, and brave novel that takes enormous risks and pulls them all off. He is a writer to watch and keep reading, a writer to cherish."
– Peter Straub

"The Society of North American Magic Realists welcomes its newest, most dazzling member, Louis Maistros. His debut novel is a thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result."
– Donald Harington,
Winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award and the Oxford-American Lifetime Achievement Award.

“The Sound of Building Coffins is easily one of the finest and truest pieces of New Orleans fiction I've ever read.”
- Poppy Z. Brite

“One has to write with considerable authenticity to pull off a story steeped in magic and swamp water that examines race and class, death and rebirth, Haitian voodoo, and the beginnings of jazz in 1891 New Orleans...The plot is complex and magical, grounded in the history of the city, without being overly sentimental. There is a comfort with death as a part of life in this work that reveals deep feeling for the city and its past....Highly recommended for all fiction collections, especially where there is an interest in jazz."
- Library Journal