Keely Smith RIP

The latest addition to the list of musicians who have died this year is Keely Smith, at the age of 89, who found fame singing with husband Louis Prima for many years and as a solo singer. Of Irish/Cherokee parents from Virginia, she met Prima in New York in 1949 and the couple performed at the Sahara in Las Vegas and at the Mocambo in Hollywood and recorded together throughout the fifties, eventually having a major hit with That Old Black Magic on Capitol in 1958. 

As a solo artist she had success with I Wish You Love and made a string of recordings in the late fifties and early sixties, both with Prima, and Sam Butera and the Witnesses, and solo. Louis and Keely moved to Dot and after divorcing Prima in 1961 she signed for Reprise and enjoyed success with an album of Lennon and McCartney covers in 1964 and the single You're Breaking My Heart. She returned to recording in 1985 with the album I'm In Love Again and won a Grammy nomination for Keely Sings Sinatra in 2001.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzUXuBeXN44