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Post by beth on Dec 20, 2017 1:17:42 GMT -5
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Keely Smith, a Las Vegas legend and one of most popular singers in the era of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, died Saturday of heart failure after a long period of declining health. She was 89.
A family spokesman said she died in Palm Springs under a physician’s care. Funeral arrangements are pending, but her son-in-law and long-time music director, Dennis Michaels, said the burial will be in Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills.
Smith won the first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1959 with her late first husband Louis Prima. Together they are credited with virtually inventing the Las Vegas lounge act. They won the Grammy for the mid-tempo ballad, That Old Black Magic, but also had lasting influence on the rock generation with Brian Setzer’s recording of their Jump, Jive an' Wail and David Lee Roth’s version of their hits, Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody. Smith established a notable solo career with her milestone recording of I Wish You Love in 1957, produced by Nelson Riddle.
Cher was said to have “borrowed” Smith’s deadpan act when she was a young singing partner of the late Sonny Bono.
Pat Rizzo, who first saw Louis and Keely in Las Vegas and then became Smith's neighbor and occasional musical companion in Palm Springs, called her “the greatest entertainer and greatest singer of all time.”
Smith, who made frequent appearances at the McCallum Theatre, had pitch-perfect tone and an effortless way of making unorthodox vocal leaps seem like natural progressions. She called herself “a saloon singer” like Frank Sinatra, with whom she was linked professionally, artistically and in her personal life. She received another Grammy nomination for her 2001 CD, Keely Sings Sinatra, which she recorded with Sinatra’s blessing before his death in 1998. The album’s liner notes say Rat Pack pals Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. called her “the female Sinatra.”
Sinatra and Smith recorded the duet, How Are You Fixed For Love? and reportedly began an affair as Smith’s marriage to Prima was faltering. Smith told The Desert Sun around the year 1960 that Sinatra had asked her to marry him. She signed to his Reprise label in 1961 and recorded another duet called So In Love. Smith married Reprise producer Jimmy Bowen in 1965, a year before he produced Sinatra’s Grammy Award-winning Strangers in the Night.
Singer Jack Jones, who met Smith when he was beginning his career in Las Vegas, said she and Prima had a “wonderful act,” based on wild, crazy humor. He said Smith had a voice like none other.
“I don’t know if I’d put anybody up with her,” he said. “She had this quality, you could tell it was her. She was a beautiful singer and she just had that quality, which was so appealing. A lot of innocence.”
Michaels said Smith started playing deadpan opposite Prima because she was so young in the early days of their act that she didn’t know what to do when Prima and his band, the Witnesses, started their wild humor act.
Born Dorothy Jacqueline Keely of Cherokee and Irish heritage in Norkfolk, Va., Smith got her first job as a band singer at age 15 during World War II. She joined a group led by Prima, who had written Benny Goodman’s Swing Era standard, Sing, Sing, Sing, while still a teenager in 1948. They were married in 1953. Smith was soon dubbed “the Queen of Las Vegas.”
She parlayed her singing career into success in such movies as Thunder Road, opposite Robert Mitchum, and Hey Boy! Hey Girl and Senior Prom with Prima.
“In later years,” said Jones, “she was a complete extrovert — fun and crazy. I really enjoyed knowing her.”
After divorcing from Bowen, Smith began a long relationship with Palm Springs-based singer Bobby Milano in the mid-1970s. Milano, whose real name was Charles Caci, was the brother of Southern California mob leader Vincent "Jimmy" Caci, and Smith also maintained a friendship with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, notably attending his funeral after his assassination in 1975.
But Milano also was a fine jazz-pop singer in the local music scene, often working with singer-pianist Michaels, who married Smith’s daughter, Toni Prima. Milano not only produced Smith’s acclaimed Sinatra tribute, with Michaels creating the arrangements, but teamed with Michaels and Smith on the excellent Keel Swings Basie-Style and Swing, Swing, Swing, featuring a recording of Slim Gaillard’s Palm Springs Jump that Lucie Arnaz has since perpetuated as a Palm Springs theme song. Smith toured with Michaels as her music director for 25 years.
“She was probably one of the greatest female pop-jazz singers this country has ever produced,” said Michaels. “There would be times during a concert I would actually stop playing and just sit and listen. With a full orchestra, you could do that. But there were times where she just astounded me with her intonation and her interpretation of the lyrics and just incredible voice.”
Michaels noted she took more vocal risks as a jazz singer in her later years and really did reinvent herself from being primarily a lounge entertainer.
“One of her favorite things to do, even with a full orchestra, was to get in the curve of the concert grand piano and take her shoes off and just sing with the piano," Michaels said. "She would rather do that than anything. She obviously enjoyed singing with the orchestra. But I think because of her emotional connection to a lyric, she really enjoyed that intimate moment with the piano.”
Smith appeared on the 50th anniversary of the Grammys telecast in 2008, performing a duet of That Old Black Magic with Kid Rock. She made her last public appearance in 2011 at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center. Later that year, she performed at the late golf pro Ken Venturi's 80th birthday party.
Smith has stars on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars (at 111 S. Palm Canyon Drive) and the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 7080 Hollywood Blvd.) and she is a member of the Las Vegas Hall of Fame.
She is survived by her daughters Toni Prima of Palm Springs and Luanne Prima of Los Angeles.
www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2017/12/17/singer-keely-smith-who-found-fame-partnered-husband-louis-prima-dies-89/959733001/