That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas by Tom Clavin

Author:Tom Clavin [Clavin, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781556528217
Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Sinatra was entering his peak years as an entertainer, and he found his greatest success in Hollywood and Las Vegas. On the big screen in the mid-1950s he was seen in Young at Heart with Doris Day, Guys and Dolls with Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons, The Man with the Golden Arm (which earned him his second Oscar nomination, this time in the Best Actor category), High Society with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, and The Joker Is Wild, about longtime Vegas comedian Joe E. Lewis, who performed often at the Sands, sometimes reciting Shakespeare with Sinatra.

And there was Elvis too. He would become a regular in Las Vegas late in his career, but his debut there was not promising at all. He was twenty-one in April 1956 and had just completed his first sessions for RCA Records. “Heartbreak Hotel” was getting radio play, and he had made his first television appearance, on the Dorsey Brothers TV Show. Presley was booked to appear at the New Frontier Hotel on a bill with Shecky Greene and Freddy Martin and his orchestra. To help hype the relatively unknown man from Memphis, he was proclaimed in print ads to be “The Atomic Powered Singer.” (Greene became friends with both Louis and Keely, and for a time employed Louis’s daughter Joyce. “He was not happy about that,” Greene says. “I don’t think he wanted her in show business.”)

People didn’t come to Las Vegas to see rock ‘n’ roll then, as evidenced by the tepid reception Presley received. He did two twelve-minute shows a night for two weeks. Even dressing him up in a bow tie and jacket didn’t help him blend in. Elsewhere in 1956 his career took off, especially when he appeared on Milton Berle’s TV show and Ed Sullivan’s show, which was seen by fifty-four million viewers. When he returned to Las Vegas later that year, it was to see Liberace’s show at the Riviera and Freddie Bell and his Bellboys at the Sands. Presley was particularly captivated by Bell because of a song he sang that began, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog!” It had been recorded in 1953 by Big Mama Thornton and was written by two white teenagers, Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber.

Apparently, there was another popular act in Las Vegas that Elvis enjoyed. After Presley’s “All Shook Up” climbed to the top of the charts, he was asked where he got the wiggle that went with performing it. “From Louis Prima, of course,” he replied.

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