December.
The month is extremely blessed, if you do not know anything about the approaching New Year, you cannot prepare for it in any way, and even more so, not a single minute of your most precious personal time should be spent on all sorts of nonsense like rhymes for Santa Claus, gifts for households and friends and decorations (for your beloved and for the salvation of the soul from the hell of a city that is too big) luxurious dwellings and modest shelters.
Do you live in the country?
Well, you also have to rake the New Year's snow.
Better than anything else, in December, a glass of candles, radiant in the light of Prosecco, helps from light, a little chaotic brutality.
And where does that grow in our country, from which the drink of the gods (and people, tormented by the benefits of civilization) is made?
In Italy.
Where are we in the happiest month of the year - without the Italians?
Except that...
No.
The circus is for another.
There are always a lot of Italy and Italians in our life - they know how to fill the space of life and cuisine.
Passions simmer.
Sparkling is bursting from the glasses over the edge.
Plays the trumpet and yells at the same time frantically - who?
Mr. Louis Prima.
The most that neither is the Italian Italian.
Born December 7, 1910 in New Orleans.
It's not even that man is a phenomenon.
A historical artifact that loudly proclaims itself at every moment.
You may not believe it, but constantly, in any of the seconds somewhere in our sublunary world, generously mixing boogie-woogie, rock and roll, blues and tarantella, he sings, jumping out of laughter and fooling around from himself, restless , almost insane (for the public, anyway), never aging and never discouraged - Louis Prima.
The boy comes from a family of Italian immigrants with Sicilian roots.
How wonderful that, having conquered the world and the Capitol company, he settled with his mind-blowing, exorcist shows exactly in Las Vegas.
What a beautiful and gloomy prophecy, what an irony of fate - a Sicilian trumpet player, gutting the pockets of the most respected public five times a night.
Yes Yes.
This madman, this macho with a grimace of voluptuous suffering on his face, was the most common workaholic.
I changed my repertoire several times a night.
He sang and played the trumpet live, wheezing like a wounded bear in the morning, bouncing around the stage and the hall, trying to take the guests to the devil, and tables with snacks.
And a twenty-year-old girl with an impenetrable face, fragile, with a daring and straight boyish haircut, black-haired, beautiful to stupidity, sang along with him from the stage in the most tender, like an angelic (perhaps very well-posed) voice.
What was he singing there?
What was the trumpet playing?
Why did they, the "great connoisseurs" of jazz, call him Armstrong's shadow?
Envy.
Simple human feeling.
Unclouded by nothing.
I found Guy Lombardo.
The same one, under whose orchestra America a quarter of a century (and almost the same amount earlier than that - at the radio) met the New Year on TVs.
With the striking of the clock at midnight.
With heartfelt Auld Lang Syne, magically performed by Carmen Lombardo.
Ah, these Italians are brothers to the whole world forever.
For Guy Lombardo, it was enough for one evening to thoroughly question the not at all shy young Louis about his childhood, so that everything would immediately fall into place.
Louis Prima's mother, an inveterate music lover and connoisseur of beauty in general, taught all her children music in accordance with her own ideas and taste.
Louis got the violin.
And he quite responsibly exercised in mastering it, but the copper cornet of the elder brother, beaten by life and time, led the boy astray - he became a trumpet player.
Obsessed with Louis Armstrong and King Oliver.
Everything was so mixed up in New Orleans and its clubs that the Lord God himself would not have figured it out, but the mid-level angels could, and the world was shown a hitherto unseen and unheard-of style - the black roots of blues, gospel and spirituals merged into one with Italian folk songs, with dancing till you drop and with jazz, or rather, with Dixieland.
You couldn't help but hear these songs.
They are like electricity (they say that no one has seen it either, and the lights in houses and on Christmas trees are lit by the light of stars that have long been extinguished somewhere and once).
Just A Gigolo - I Ain
'
t Got Nobody, Oh Marie, Buona Sera, Banana Split For My Baby, Jump, Jive, An * Wail, When You
'
re Smiling - The Sheik Of Araby, Angelina - Zooma Zooma, Beep!
Beep !, That Old BlackMagic and - attention!
- Sing, Sing, Sing, because it was Louis Prima who wrote it in the distant and foggy 1936.
"Why so many transfers?"
- you ask if you read this far.
And then, that a person needs pure joy that comes from nothing!
From a vinyl record or simply - from the Internet!
Two or three songs - and you can safely order a Christmas tree for urgent delivery (as if in the heat of the yard they ran to chop - be careful here), climb on the mezzanine for toys hidden in paper and cotton wool.
Remove the garlands to the light of day, put away (in the freezer) the champagne, put the wine glasses and light the candles - Italy and New Orleans will help you this night, and just try to cheekily lie, which, they say, “didn't hook” - I won't believe in either single second!
It would be nice to hide not one, but at least two or three bottles of lovely prosecco in the refrigerator.
Sing, Sing, Sing is an anthem of the swing era, originally a dedication to the brilliant and charming Bing Crosby, the coolest of all America's cruners.
Louis Prima wanted to name the song Sing Bing Sing, but out of modesty (ha-ha) changed his mind - a nice Italian boy.
Benny Goodman, the polished king of swing and roaring big bands, conductor and clarinetist from God, smelled a rajah's diamond the size of a bull's head in Prima's "thing" at eight minutes and forty-three seconds, a version permanently cast in shellac of a 12-inch record - in half on each side!
By the way!
It is thanks to this jazz standard that drummers (they are also drummers by and large) managed to come out of the shadows and get their own personal solo - this is especially evident on the first recording of Sing Bing Sing.
So - Mr. Louis Prima.
Persistent and tenacious like a buffalo.
He turned the mountains.
Earned the nickname Wildest!
- and how else could you call his screams and passages on the trumpet?
He won the heart of America's first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and she, having attended one of his performances in Washington, invited Prima to perform at a concert in honor of President Franklin Roosevelt's birthday.
Louis Prima was not drafted into the army, a (very real) severe knee injury helped, and Prima continued to perform for the common people and the army, unexpectedly faced with a serious public hostility towards the Italians - there was a war, and which side Italy took, everyone in America was known.
To the gallery page
It was then that the main thing happened, for which I love, respect and respect Prima - with maniacal persistence, he continued to sing Italian songs, coolly mixed in Dixieland and swing, continued to the place and not very much (although this is a figure of speech, he had everything “Very”) to insert Italian phrases and words into performances, giving rise to another new style out of nothing, from pure improvisation - scat - improvised jazz vocalization, a seemingly senseless jumble of sounds, screams, scraps of verbal and musical phrases.
The origins of such a miracle are known - the stage riots of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald.
But what incredible heights, what refined perfection Louis Prima achieved in all this!
Finishing your second bottle of prosecco?
Did you manage to listen to some of his hits?
The audience obeyed him.
He was his own, and he remained.
He made really crazy money, but music was always number one for him.
In 1948 he met Keely Smith.
We owe this to her brilliant duets, in which two voices, an angel and a demon, sing to us - each in a separate ear.
The newest, never before seen stereo inside STEREO.
A-ah-ah!
You finally made it to That Old Black Magic!
Feel the thousands of bubbles of champagne boiling under your skin - Love?
Did you think this does not happen?
We thought it was all "junk and junk" of the tube era ?!
For this version they, Prima and Smith, received a three-time Grammy!
Where is your tree felled in the yard?
Is it sparkling and glistening with strange lights?
In 1954, Prima will reach the peak of power.
His concerts at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, together with his now wife (the fourth in a row) Keely Smith and saxophone friend Sam Boutera (of course, the Italian is a devil of sound and a frantic professional), will pave the way into the “desert of happiness and dreams "To literally everyone - and Elvis too.
It is Prima who, with her insane success of endless nightly shows, will create Las Vegas a flair of expensive musical pathos on the verge of hysteria - the highest standard, pure gold.
Listen.
Enjoy.
Any of the records of those years.
Any of the things from that period.
For everything that brings us joy is permeated with the spirit of the Coming Holidays.
What else?
Maybe a little prosecco?
Keely Smith is a star of the first magnitude.
It deserves a separate discussion.
Her creative and love union (thirteen years together) with Prima is only part of an incredibly rich and long life.
And within the union of this, those hits were born that invariably cheer the blood of a tired traveler of a big city, a person "exhausted by hunger and thirst" spiritual, a creature with a spark of God in his chest, so fiercely blown by the winds of life.
Away from worries and doubts!
May the darkness be driven out of our hearts and souls!
Let's put together glasses full of joy - in the middle of December, the first son of either an old woman or a beauties of Winter!
Let's have fun ...
What else remains for matured children, burdened with responsibility, circumstances, family ties ...
Let's not talk about what happened next.
How and how the earthly life of Louis Prima ended.
What does it matter today, on his birthday?
He gave us happiness.
Gives now.
And so - here is the full text of my favorite song by Louis Prima and Keely Smith That Old Black Magic!
You know the feeling.
We all know him.
Love is like New Year and Christmas - exactly the same insane waste, the same, it would seem, never fading away the brilliant brilliance of being! ..
And in fact...
Magic...
Just the magic of sound.
That old black magic has me in its spell
That old black magic that you weave so well
Those icy fingers up and down my spine
The same old witchcraft
When your eyes meet mine
The same old tingle that I feel inside
And then that elevator starts its ride
And down and down I go, round and round I go
Like a leaf that's caught in the tide
I should stay away but what can I do?
I hear your name and I'm aflame
Aflame with such a burning desire
That only your kiss can put out the fire
'Cause you are the lover I have waited for
The mate that fate had me created for
And every time your lips meet mine
Darling, down and down I go,
Round and round I go
In a spin, loving the spin that I'm in
Under that old black magic called love !!!
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.