Move over, Barbara Cook. Here comes another lady in her 70s with a voice that sounds decades younger. This is Keely Smith, who is appearing in cabaret at Feinstein's on Park Avenue in Manhattan in May 2003. If her dreams come true, she'll someday appear a few blocks from there on Broadway in her own show.
Smith hopes to emulate Cook and do a one-woman theater piece. Or—an even better plan she tells us about—she'd like to follow the lead of Elaine Stritch and do an evening that mixes autobiography with singing. "When I was younger, I was very shy," she says. "I couldn't get up in front of people and talk about myself, but now I can. Also, there were personal stories about my romances that I wouldn't tell. I even started writing an autobiography but stopped it because I didn't want to write about being unfaithful to Louis while he still was alive. Now I don't feel it would hurt anyone if I tell the story. Hell, lots of people in the business write about drugs and drinking and a lot of things that are much worse than what I did."
The most scandalous thing Smith did, according to her own reckoning, was to have an affair with Frank Sinatra while she was married to Louis Prima. More about that in a moment.
Keely Smith's recent recordings for Concord Jazz honor the great loves of her life. "Keely Smith: Swing, Swing, Swing," recorded in 2000, is a tribute to Prima. It features songs the bandleader made popular, such as "When You're Smiling," "The Sheik of Araby" and "Oh Marie" (re-worked into "Oh Louie"). Prima made an indelible impression when he sang those tunes with his gravelly voice. Smith, in those days, sang slow ballads, straight. On this CD she adopts the scat-singing flavor of Prima. Her artistry, and the richness of her voice, are remarkable.
Smith was born Dorothy Keely in Norfolk, Virginia, on March 9, 1932, the daughter of Fannie and Jesse Smith. She was an innocent 16 when Prima came into her life in 1948. "His band was playing Virginia Beach," she relates, "and my brother and I went to see him. He was looking to replace his girl singer, and my brother told him I sang. He put me in front of his band and had me sing a couple of songs, and hired me, so I left home. Louis and all the boys in the band were protective of me. I respected Louis as a musician, but I didn't see anything romantic in him. He was older, and short and not conventionally handsome. [Prima was 38 and married.] One day, my mother came to see us play, and she saw the way I looked adoringly at Louis while he was singing and playing, and she told me that she could tell I was in love with him. She knew before I did."
After getting a divorce, Louis married Keely on July 13, 1953. It was his fourth marriage, her first. They later had two daughters, Toni and Luanne.
Smith was not the first pop singer to come from the South. Kate Smith and Dinah Shore, for example, were from Virginia and Tennessee. But Keely was the first to sing with such a distinct regional accent. She said "Ah" for I, "mah" for my and "abote" for about. Thus Smith was a trailblazer for a new generation of singers who affected southern accents—even when they weren't from there. Add to this Keely's expressionless face and long, straight black hair, and you have the prototype of Cher.
In the 1950s, Keely Smith provided a dead-pan, glamorous contrast to Louis Prima's extroverted and joyful personality as his band reached its greatest popularity. It was a small band that featured the honking sax of Louis' old friend, Sam Butera. Prima delighted fans by mugging and sometimes even talking while Smith was singing her ballads. When she crooned "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good," Prima in the background commented, "I got it good and it ain't bad."
"Louis' band was the hottest lounge act in Vegas during the time that Sinatra was a headliner," says Smith. "We played five shows a night at the Sahara Hotel, from midnight to 6 a.m. Sinatra would come to see us after his own shows, and he'd bring a gang of his friends with him." Sinatra joked around with Prima, but clearly he had his eyes on the sultry Mrs. Prima, with her long raven hair.
"He had a pet name for me, the Injun," because she is part Cherokee Indian. "One day, Frank invited Louis and me to fly to his home in California for a few days, but Louis said he had other plans. He told me to go ahead without him, and I did, and I kind of knew I was heading for trouble."
As she expected, a passionate affair began. "But it was more than that," she adds. "Frank and I really were in love. He asked me to marry him, but I said no. I was feeling very guilty about betraying Louis. When Frank sang a love song, he seemed to be the saddest man in the world." On the rebound from Smith's rejection, Sinatra asked Juliet Prowse to marry him. After she broke off their engagement, Sinatra married the young Mia Farrow.
"Keely Sings Sinatra" on the Concord Jazz label features romantic ballads made popular by Ol' Blue Eyes, such as "This Love of Mine" and "Dream." In addition, Smith swings the songs where Sinatra used a finger-snapping style, like "Night and Day" and "I've Got You Under My Skin." Smith recorded these in 2001 with a roaring big band and lush strings behind her. In "The Music Stopped," she copies the breathless, sighing quality that Sinatra used when the song was new in 1943, but also brings fresh insights. And in the slow Gershwin ballad, "I've Got a Crush on You," she uses jazz modulations that even go beyond what Sinatra found in the song. Throughout the record, Smith reveals an individual style and warm voice.
Many singers have paid tribute to Sinatra, and talk about how they love Frank. But few of them can say it with the literal meaning that Keely Smith has when she talks of their love. More importantly, there is no other tribute that's musically as good as this one.
A third Concord CD, "Keely Swings Basie-style," was recorded in 2002. She loved the Count's music, and it suits her voice wonderfully well, but there's no romantic story behind this one.
After the end of the Sinatra-Smith affair, the marriage of Keely and Louis broke up anyway. In 1961, right after signing a multi-million dollar contract with the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, the couple were divorced. He then married another girl singer, Gia Maione, and continued to work in Vegas through 1967. Prima had a reputation of being a womanizer. According to people in the business, Prima used to instruct his girl singers to go down onto the dance floor and start conversations with good-looking women whom the leader spotted from the bandstand. When these women left their dates to go to the bathroom, he'd have his singer follow them and say that Louis would like to meet them after the show.
Louis and Keely remained friends. Prima died in 1978 at age 67 of pneumonia following a brain tumor. The love in Smith's life now is Bobby Milano, who produced her three recent albums.
Did Smith and Sinatra have a special song that served as a signature for their romance? "All the Way," she answers. It's on the record.
[END]
