Louis Prima.

Louis Leo Prima arrived on December 7, 1910 in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. His older brother Leon took up the trumpet while Louis was still young, and Louis switched from violin to trumpet. He attended Warren Easton High School and Jesuit High School in New Orleans before starting his music career. By the 1930s, he played clubs like The Famous Door, shaping the energetic style that defined his career.

Prima led big bands in the 1940s, but his key collaboration started in the 1950s with teenage singer Keely Smith. Together they recorded That Old Black Magic in 1958, a Grammy winner that sold millions. He wrote and first recorded the Benny Goodman jazz standard Sing Sing Sing in 1936. In 1967, Prima voiced King Louie the orangutan in Disney’s The Jungle Book, singing I Wan’na Be Like You The Monkey Song. His 1939 composition Jump Jive and Wail and his 1957 medley Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody laid the groundwork for rock and roll.

Prima married five times: Louisa Polizzi 1929–1936, Alma Ross 1936–1947, Tracelene Melva Barrett 1948–1953, Keely Smith 1953–1962, and Gia Maione 1963 until his death. His partnership with Keely Smith was both professional and romantic; they divorced in 1962. He then married Gia Maione, with whom he had two children: Lena Prima and Louis Prima Jr. In 1975, Prima underwent surgery for a brain tumor. He never regained consciousness and spent three years in a coma, dying of pneumonia in 1978.

Louis Prima helped found rock and roll. He wrote A Sunday Kind of Love for Ella Fitzgerald in 1947; it was later covered by The Harptones and Reba McEntire. He received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, and was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008. His music spans genres, and his voice as King Louie endures. He remains known for hits Jump Jive and Wail and Just a Gigolo.