By PENNY LANDAU **** Legendary jazz vocalist Keely Smith passed away on Saturday, December 16, 2017, in Palm Springs, California. She was 89 and had been suffering from heart failure. Smith’s son-in-law and long-time musical director, Dennis Michaels, said that Smith would be buried in Hollywood at Forest Lawn.
A Las Vegas legend and one of the most popular singers in the era of Frank Sinatra and the “Rat Pack,” the Grammy Award-winning singer was known for her solo recordings of jazz standards and was honored in the Las Vegas Hall of Fame and had a star on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Palm Springs Walk of Fame.
Born Dorothy Jacqueline Keely in Norfolk, Va., she was of Cherokee and Irish parentage. Starting her career singing with a naval air station band, Smith got her first paying job at age 15 with the Earl Bennett band. She joined Louis Prima’s band while still a teenager, going on the road with them in 1948. Smith married Prima, who had written Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” in 1953.
With Smith dubbed “The Queen of Las Vegas, the two are credited with inventing the Las Vegas lounge act. Prima sang and led the band with Smith playing deadpan to his comic antics. Rumor has it that Cher channeled Smith when she first started to perform with Sonny Bono. The duo won a Grammy in 1959, the first year of the awards, for best pop vocal performance by a duo or group for “That Old Black Magic,” which stayed on the charts for 18 weeks. They performed the tune at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. They also had hit albums with The Wildest! and The Wildest Show at Tahoe. Their music had a lasting influence on the younger generation, with Brian Setzer’s recording of “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” and David Lee Roth’s version of “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” following in the footsteps of the famed duo.
Smith also appeared in several films, most notably Thunder Road opposite Robert Mitchum and launched her solo singing career in 1957, with her milestone recording of “I Wish You Love,” produced by Nelson Riddle, followed by Swingin’ Pretty.
Called the “greatest entertainer of all time,” Smith had pitch-perfect tone and often referred to herself as “a saloon singer” like Sinatra, with whom she had both a professional and personal relationship. They recorded the duet “How Are You Fixed for Love” and reportedly had an affair as her marriage to Prima was ending. According to Smith, Sinatra asked her to marry him in 1960. He signed her to his Reprise label in 1961 and the two then recorded another duet, “So in Love.” In 1965, after her 1961 divorce from Prima, Keely married Reprise producer Jimmy Bowen, who would go on to produce Sinatra’s Grammy Award-winning “Strangers in the Night.” The Intimate Keely Smith, which was recently re-released, was also produced by Bowen.
Following her divorce from Bowen in 1969, Keely began a relationship with Bobby Milano, a Palm Springs based singer, who produced her Sinatra tribute CD, Keely Sings Sinatra, a Grammy-nominee in 2001, which was recorded with his blessing before he passed. In the liner notes, fellow Rat Packers Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Marin called Keely “the female Sinatra.” Milano also produced her Keely Swings Basie-Style and Swing, Swing, Swing. When she & Milano married in 1975, Sinatra gave the bride away.
In 2005, she played a series of shows in New York City, which was capped by the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC).It was during this time that I met Keely. We talked about jazz, Sinatra and the way things are in the music business today, as opposed to the old days. I was surprised and saddened when she told me that she was legally prevented from performing the music for which she & Prima were known. She did, however, appear at the 2008 Grammy Awards to perform “That Old Black Magic” with Kid Rock. Her final performance was in 2011 at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center.
Keely Smith is survived by her children, Toni Prima of Palm Springs and Luanne Prima of Los Angeles.
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