[Dixielandjazz] Louis Prima Jr. interviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Louis Prima Jr. interviewed

Louis Prima Jr. Brings Both His Father's Style -- and His Own -- to the Boardwalk
by Phil Roura
New York Daily News, October 16, 2010

In a time when radio is filled with R&B, rap, country and rock, Louis Prima Jr.'s
head hears only swing, the music from a golden age of big names and bigger bands.
It's a sound as foreign to today's younger ears as are the 33-rpm vinyl albums his
father used to make.
Louis Prima Sr. was the king of swing before Benny Goodman ever recorded "Sing, Sing,
Sing" and made it his personal anthem. The elder Prima wrote it -- as he did "Just
a Gigolo," "Bell Bottom Trousers" and "Be Happy." But with his penchant for novelty
ditties like "Felicia No Capicia," "Baciagaloop (Makes Love on the Stoop)" and "Zooma
Zooma (C'e La Luna Mezz'o Mare)," the Sicilian-American bandleader never gained the
respect that Goodman, Harry James and others did.
He was, nevertheless, a gold star performer for a blue-collar audience.
Now, fast-forward to 2010. Complete with a 21st century version of his father's band,
the Witnesses, and a girl singer, Sarah Spiegel, Junior has re-created Dad's sounds
and wild antics -- with an occasional slip into modernity. They play the Trump Plaza
on Friday and Saturday.
"My father finally gained the respect he deserved when he was given a star a few
weeks ago in Hollywood on the 100th anniversary of his birth," says the 45-year-old
Prima, whose mother is Gia Maione, the elder Prima's fifth wife.
"He was respected as an entertainer," says the son, "but not as a musician. At least
not in the jazz community, even though he was born in New Orleans. Perhaps part of
the problem was that Dad changed genres and developed a wild side to his music that
had audiences stomping with him."
So Junior continues to blow his father's horn (like the old man, he also plays trumpet).
"The beautiful thing is that I kind of look like him, move like him and sound like
him," he says. Yet, while he does his father's standards, "I'm trying to do my own
thing. I'm recording a few Prima songs along with some originals that I wrote, and
I hope to have my first album out by Christmas."
His crew is "a rock band with horns. If you look at it, my father was more rock than
jazz. He was a big star in Atlantic City."
In February, they will swing through Europe where, "if you can believe it, he is
still very big -- even though he never played there."
"The thing is, Dad was deathly afraid of airplanes. He never flew in one. On the
one day he was going to fly to Europe, he suddenly bolted up the aisle as the plane
was about to depart the gate and said, 'I can't do this! I'm outta here!' And that
was that."
Besides having Spiegel as a sidekick and a 2010 version of the Witnesses, Prima has
invited his son Anthony, 12, to join the band on occasion.
"Anthony also plays the trumpet. He is a total ham, like I was. My other son, Jacob,
who is 18, is studying art and he is quite good at it," Prima says with fatherly
pride.
But with Prima Sr.'s grandson blowing his horn, this is one family that looks to
keep swing alive.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
916/806-9551
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

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