That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas (11 page)

Butera formed his own band, and they began an engagement at the 500 Club, owned by Leon Prima. He was on the lookout for a recording contract, and his break came after a featured spot in a concert with Woody Herman’s band. Butera made several records for the RCA and Groove labels. He went on the road with DJ Alan Freed’s first rock ‘n’ roll tour of the East Coast, giving him some exposure beyond New Orleans, and he spent time playing in Tommy Dorsey’s band.

Bebop jazz was the style that Butera cared for most, but he found it hard to get gigs in the New Orleans area playing that way. By the time he first encountered Prima, who was back in New Orleans (perhaps for a preholiday family get-together after the initial Sahara gig), Butera had been listening to the records of rock ‘n’ roll pioneers—including Fats Domino, also of New Orleans—and borrowing some of their beat and combining it with some of the honking sax sounds bleating out of clubs in the French Quarter.

“When I met Louis, I had a job at a place right on the highway outside of New Orleans,” recalled Butera about Perez’s Oasis Club in Metairie, where he led a band called the Night Trainers, in 1954. “Leon had said to him, ‘This kid does a lot of business, Louis. Let him play with your band.’ Louis said sure. So I went on the stage and I get a couple of songs with his band. After I got through, Louis said, ‘Sam, I’m going to Vegas, if anything happens I’m going to call you.’ I said, ‘Gee, wonderful. How much money?’ ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Louis said.”

Very soon after, Louis called Sam and said, “You better come out here, and bring a few other guys.” He wanted Butera there on Christmas Day itself, but the sax player, perhaps not realizing how close he was cutting it, insisted that he be home on Christmas with his wife, Vera, and their children and that instead he would get there on the twenty-sixth.

That was opening night of the new act in the Casbar Lounge. As they were getting ready for the curtain to open, Sam tried unsuccessfully to introduce the sidemen to Louis and Keely. During the show, when Louis asked Sam who they were, he shouted “The Witnesses!” That is what Butera’s band would remain for their run in Las Vegas and beyond.

“I have to be honest and say this: until Sam came, the group didn’t really cook,” Keely said. “They were nice guys, and they were pretty good musicians, but Sam was the front that Louis needed to work off of.”

“He came up with the idea of using a blend of rock ‘n’ roll rhythm, a blend of rhythm and blues, and that which he had always done, which was a kind of a shuffle beat,” Will Friedwald said in the documentary
Louis Prima: The Wildest!.

It wasn’t just Butera’s musicianship and active stage presence that made Prima’s band different from any other. He started writing arrangements for the Witnesses in a shuffle beat that pushed the 4/4 rhythm onto the snare drum and made the song feel twice as fast as it really was. What emerged was a distinctive Witnesses sound that other bands would try to imitate without much success.

“[Butera] brought to their stage show a driving sound and a flair for showmanship that perfectly complemented Prima’s,” wrote music critic Joseph F. Laredo. “It was a musical partnership made in heaven.”

Suddenly, everything clicked. According to Keely, “Louis and I had worked hard for years to create a good act, but it was when Sam and the boys showed up that we knew we had something special.”

People literally left the slot machines and gaming tables to check out the wild sound in the lounge. That was OK, because within just a few nights the act was bringing more people into the Sahara than ever before, creating a bigger reservoir of gamblers in the place. “We didn’t just play music—we put on a show,” Keely wrote in
Fabulous Las Vegas in the ‘50s.
“Little by little, the crowds started getting so big the room had to be enclosed. Drapes were put up, which helped muffle the sound because we were loud, louder than the pit bosses, dice tables and the slot machines.”

Miller cleared the schedule so that Prima and his act could play the lounge indefinitely. The
Las Vegas Sun
raved that Louis and Keely were “absolutely the hottest combo to hit this town yet” and that they were destined to be the “all-time record holders for Las Vegas lounges,” which, at that time, wasn’t the highest praise possible.

The band that Sam had pulled together in December consisted of Jimmy “Little Red” Blount on trombone, Jack Marshall on guitar, Willie McComber Jr. on keyboards, Bobby Morris on drums, and Amado Rodrigues on bass. This lineup would change—often because Louis was considered too much the penny-pincher—but still the band would become tighter over the years. Even as 1955 began, it had already brought to Las Vegas an original, thrilling sound.

The act was a smash. Word went along the Strip fast that there was something new and different and … well, “wild” going on at the Sahara Hotel. The
Review-Journal
reported under a photograph of Louis: “Exclusive Columbia recording artist Louis Prima and his all star quintet not only make records but they break records. Prima’s extended stay in the Casbar Lounge has been the high point of Las Vegas’ musical entertainment. Louis features his pretty wife, Keely Smith, in comedy and special arrangements. Their appearance has made the Casbar the entertainment hub of our fun center.”

Louis Prima and Keely Smith and the Witnesses did five shows a night and dripped with sweat when they left the lounge not long before the winter dawn. Bill Miller’s problem was no longer where to find room to fit the act in but to find more and more weeks to keep the act going.

The timing for Louis and Keely couldn’t have been better. Fewer than nine thousand people lived in Las Vegas during World War II. By 1954, there were over forty-five thousand, and it was the fastest-growing small city in the country. In those days gossip about celebrities didn’t stay in Vegas; it instead filled up the pages of newspapers and magazines around the country. People would find out about a hot “new” act real soon.

In addition to the music, what made the band hot was the dynamic between the aggressive and virile Louis and … well, Keely could no longer play the virginal ingénue as her belly grew bigger, but she was still the female figure to be wooed and won over. They appeared to be more deeply in love than ever. There did not seem to be any pretense about it. Louis was not one then or later to talk about their emotional life, but Keely repeatedly reported on how much in love she was with her husband. Miraculously, on his fourth try, Louis had hit matrimonial pay dirt. Many people in the audience lived vicariously through this idealized relationship. It was indeed a love story, and every night that the act knocked ‘em dead reinforced the expectation that Louis and Keely would live happily ever after.

While the rapport between Louis and Keely was not new, just intensified, working with Sam Butera and his handpicked sidemen and the vein-popping, toe-tapping sound they all produced together was. According to jazz critic Scott Shea: “The banter between Louis and Keely was not without its share of innuendo and off-color references. Surrounding the jokes and the gags, and keeping everything jumping, were Butera and the Witnesses, supplying a wild, relentless, driving beat that punched through the lounge’s smoke and chatter and left crowds in awe. There was nothing like it.”

“I remember working with Louis in Brooklyn when his singer was Lily Carol and he was on his way to becoming a small-time band, especially after Lily left and married a friend of mine who was a sax player,” recalls comedian Jack Carter. “Then he comes to Vegas with Keely Smith and the impact was tremendous. People were elbowing each other out of the way to get in.”

And Prima’s well-honed stage personality and catalogue were new to the Nevada audience who flocked to the growing neon city to have fun. “Louis Prima had the most exclusively humorous slant of all trumpeters,” wrote Friedwald in
Jazz Singing.
“By the time he had made it to Las Vegas especially, he had worked out the details on a performance method completely devoted to breaking people up, as funny in its own way as Victor Borge or Spike Jones. Prima brought to banal novelties the same dedication of purpose that Toscanini brought to Verdi or that Leonard Bernstein brought to the Broadway musical, and ‘Hitsum Kitsum Bumpity Itsum’ means just as much to Prima as ‘Body and Soul’ does to Coleman Hawkins. His wonderfully flaunted irreverence, as when he ‘outlines’ (feeds the lyrics of) the Neo-politan pop song ‘Oh Marie’ (‘Maria Mari’) in
Italian
for a chorus of Mitch Miller-inspired WASPs, has such an absolute purity to it that it becomes incredibly reverent.”

According to Garry Boulard’s analysis, “What Prima’s interest in rock ‘n’ roll displayed was his desire to find a musical style not only complementary to Keely, but also different enough to firmly etch her in the public’s mind as unique. Prima had an idea about music in the 1950s: The best sound, he decided, would be one that mixed aspects of Dixieland, jazz, swing, and rock ‘n’ roll. This was a revolutionary thought in the business. In 1954 the lines between such styles were firmly drawn with musicians rarely venturing to cross such borders, much less combine elements of each genre. But Prima had freely mixed musical influences in his songs throughout his career, and suffered the hostile reviews of critics less imaginative than he for it.”

What was also new to Louis and Keely’s performance was that every day her due date approached. The pregnancy didn’t affect the act too much, because for much of the time Keely remained rooted to one spot anyway, but she felt increasingly tired.

She probably would have enjoyed going to the movies, if she’d had time for it. In the third week in December a most popular film was, of course,
White Christmas
starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. It replaced
Reap the Wild Wind
with John Wayne and Paulette Goddard at the El Portal theater. More rugged fare available was
Yellow Mountain
with Lex Barker and Howard Duff (“They battled for the golden heart of a fabulous mountain … and a woman’s unclaimed lips!”) at the Palace, and down the street was the double feature of
Drum Beat
with Alan Ladd and
Return to Treasure Island
with Tab Hunter. Coming attractions were being shown for
Black Widow
with Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, and George Raft,
Track of the Cat
starring future Keely costar Robert Mitchum and Teresa Wright, and
Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops.

An indication that the Primas’ quick success allowed them to be embraced by people who mattered in Las Vegas was this item in the January 8, 1955, edition of the weekly publication
Fabulous Las Vegas:
“We think it was a very fine gesture for Debbie and Milton Prell (owners of the Hotel Sahara) to toss a Stork Party for Mrs. Louis Prima, professionally known as Keely Smith. The gathering was held at the Prells’ lovely home January 5th and the attendance rivaled the Casbar supporters. The Primas expect their image in March. The expectant mother is still performing on stage and spectators still can’t believe her blessed event is due so shortly.”

At first, the word of mouth was that Louis, Keely, and Sam were doing the “wildest show in town.” Soon, however, the “official” nickname for the act became “The Wildest.”

Next to New Orleans, Las Vegas was the most accommodating home that Louis Prima would ever have. And of all places, the city and its surroundings had a good number of Italians even before the mob moved in. The first Italian immigrants arrived in Nevada in the 1860s to toil as miners in the Com-stock Lode. They invested their wages in land throughout the state, and some became ranchers while others established businesses in small settlements.

The first non-Indian to set foot in the Las Vegas Valley was Rafael Rivera. He was a scout in a sixty-man party led by Antonio Armijo, a Mexican trader, along the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles in 1829. On Christmas Day they camped a hundred miles northeast of what is today Las Vegas, and Rivera went in search of water. He discovered the Las Vegas Springs. Travel routes were changed so that people going to and from Los Angeles could stop and drink from the Springs.

Las Vegas itself was actually first settled by Mormons from Utah who built a mission in 1855, when the area was part of Arizona, to provide protection for the Los Angeles–Salt Lake City mail route. The first mention of Las Vegas had been eleven years earlier, when explorer John C. Fremont camped near the desert springs and recorded the name, which meant “The Meadows.” The place, then part of territory that still belonged to Mexico, began to appear on Spanish maps.

Why was a settlement founded at Las Vegas as opposed to other sites in southwestern Nevada? (The state was created and admitted to the Union in 1864 as the “Battle Born State.”) The same element that has such a profound impact on the city today: water. There were natural underground springs that when tapped made the Las Vegas Valley livable.

Beset by difficulties that included intense heat and Indian raids, the Mormons left after only three years, and their mission land became part of an expanding ranch owned by Octavius Gass. Archibald Stewart bought the land in 1881, and after he was murdered three years later, his wife ran the two-thousand-acre Las Vegas Rancho until 1902, when it was purchased by the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad—founded by the crooked Senator William Clark of Montana—because of the available water.

Las Vegas was established on May 15, 1905, essentially as a railroad town, with the depot at Fremont and Main Streets. The city was incorporated six years later. The town’s residents were mostly laborers, and the station was the main stop between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. Its ice plant, the only one between Salt Lake City and San Bernardino, allowed produce to be shipped across the desert. The two primary sections of Las Vegas were its downtown business area and its red-light district. The Hotel Nevada, built in 1906, was the place to stay for people passing through, and the following year the first telephone in Las Vegas was installed in the hotel and electric lights first glowed on Fremont Street. A movie theater opened in 1928. Ironically, the first feature shown was a Clara Bow movie titled
Ladies of the Mob.