Keely Smith

Keely Smith distinguished herself as a skilled traditional pop vocalist chiefly recognized for her extended collaboration as duet partner with the late singer and trumpeter Louis Prima. At the same time she proved a capable solo artist whose abilities aligned with those of the foremost female singers active in the 1950s. Alongside Prima she supplied the composed foil within their exuberant, near-parodic mixtures of jazz, jump blues, and Italian pop, both on discs such as Las Vegas Prima Style and throughout their Las Vegas-centered stage presentations. The pair reached a notable pinnacle in 1958 when their version of Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen’s “That Old Black Magic” climbed into the Top 20, securing the first Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group. Working alone, Smith issued a succession of well-regarded albums and registered a hit with “I Wish You Love” in 1957. Following her divorce from Prima she joined Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records and delivered several polished albums shaped by the musical direction of Nelson Riddle and Ernie Freeman. She reentered the charts in 1965 via the Top 20 British single “You’re Breakin’ My Heart.” After withdrawing from the spotlight to raise her daughters, she mounted a return in the 1980s. Across the subsequent three decades until her death in 2017, Smith released occasional albums for Concord and continued to perform regularly.

Dorothy Jacqueline Keely came into the world in Norfolk, Virginia in 1928 and was brought up in a household of Cherokee and Irish descent. As a youngster she performed on a radio program, eventually adopting her stepfather’s surname for the stage, and later appeared with Saxie Dowell’s band at a local naval air station. Only fifteen years old, she first encountered Prima’s act in New York City. The following summer, while Prima performed in Norfolk and sought a replacement female singer, Smith obtained the role through an impromptu audition and recorded her earliest duets with him in 1949. Their relationship soon turned romantic as well, culminating in marriage in 1953; they continued to record throughout the 1950s, yet achieved their greatest renown as one of Las Vegas’s most popular stage attractions.

Upon the duo’s signing with Capitol, Prima required that Smith receive her own recording contract. The Capitol albums that followed, among them 1957’s I Wish You Love, presented assured interpretations of popular standards that occasionally swung lightly, though Smith appeared most at ease with ballads. She and Prima departed Capitol for Dot at the close of the decade, and in 1961 she ended the marriage citing extreme mental cruelty.

After the divorce Smith established her own Keely Records imprint and collaborated with longtime friend and mentor Frank Sinatra on several meticulously produced projects. Issued on Sinatra’s Reprise label, 1963’s Little Girl Blue/Little Girl New and subsequent releases highlighted Smith’s richly resonant voice within swinging arrangements supplied by Nelson Riddle and Ernie Freeman. The Reprise catalogue yielded further success when she scored a Top 20 British hit in 1965 with “You’re Breakin’ My Heart.”

Following a nearly ten-year absence from music spent raising her two daughters, Smith resumed performing. Her 1985 comeback album on Fantasy, I’m in Love Again, featured accompaniment by leading West Coast jazz musicians Bud Shank and Bill Perkins. What Kind of Fool Am I? appeared in 1994.

Amid the late-1990s neo-swing resurgence, Smith recorded several acclaimed albums for Concord, including 2000’s Swing, Swing, Swing, the 2001 Grammy-nominated Keely Sings Sinatra, and 2002’s Keely Swings Basie-Style with Strings. Three years afterward she revived the spirit of her classic Las Vegas performances with Prima on Vegas ’58 — Today. In 2012 she delivered the standards-focused Sweet and Lovely. As a shrewd businesswoman, Smith retained ownership of her Reprise masters, which had never appeared on disc. In 2016 she teamed with Real Gone Music to issue all five of her mid-1960s Reprise albums, beginning with 1964’s The Intimate Keely Smith and encompassing the Beatles-themed Keely Smith Sings the John Lennon-Paul McCartney Songbook. Smith died on December 16, 2017 of apparent heart failure at the age of 89.