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Artist
Keely Smith
12+ albums
jazzswingfemale vocalistsvocal jazzBig Band
about
Keely Smith (Dorothy Jacqueline Keely, Norfolk, Virginia, March 9, 1928 - December 16, 2017) was a Grammy Award-winning American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo-artist. Smith showed a natural aptitude for singing at a young age. At 14, she sang with a naval air station band led by Saxie Dowell. At 15, she got her first paying job with the Earl Bennett band. She saw Louis Prima perform in New York City in 1949. When he came through Norfolk, Virginia, she auditioned. She became the calm balance to Prima's wild antics, as he made his way through a repertoire of jump blues, jazz, and Italian pop songs. They recorded together in 1949 and married in 1953. Their songs included Johnny Mercer's and Harold Arlen's "That Ol' Black Magic", which was a Top 20 hit in the US in 1958. At the 1st Annual Grammy Awards in 1959, Smith and Prima won the first Grammy for Best Performance by a Vocal Group for "That Ol' Black Magic". Her deadpan act was popular with fans. The duo followed up with the minor successes "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen", a revival of the 1937 Andrews Sisters hit. Smith and Prima's act was a mainstay of the Las Vegas lounge scene for much of the 1950s. Though her actual voice was not used, she was caricatured as "Squealy Smith" in Bob Clampett's 1960 Beany and Cecil episode "So What and the Seven Whatnots," a Snow White spoof in
