The Prima Papers

An archive of one of jazz’s ‘wildest’ performers finds a home at Tulane.

Louis Prima on stage is often described as frenetic. A perfect blend of wild man and dedicated musician, the energy of New Orleans pulsated through the late bandleader.

Nearly 50 years after his death, Prima’s legacy lives on, and he remains beloved among fans who continue to celebrate his enduring music and energy.

This is in large part due to the efforts of his widow, Gia Maione Prima, who started a New Jersey-based foundation after his death to support the appreciation of American jazz and to preserve a vast wealth of materials related to his life and career. She stewarded the collection up until her death in 2013.

Known as the Louis Prima papers, the vast archive of materials was maintained by her foundation until it returned home to New Orleans in 2017. Donated to the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, a unit of Tulane University Special Collections, the material was officially made public for research in March 2023.

And it’s not just for music lovers.

The Louis Prima papers represent a full scope of archival materials, including business papers, photographs, TV scripts and other ephemera, said Melissa A. Weber, the Hogan Archive curator. The materials also include information about Italian-American history, New Orleans and Las Vegas architecture, animation and the history of television, as well as information about Prima’s family and his musical collaborators.

“There’s a tendency to associate music-based archive repositories to music, but this is so much more. It truly reflects the multidisciplinary nature of archives,” said Weber.

The opening of the Prima archive for public research is the culmination of a dream for Prima’s widow, Gia Maione Prima, who wanted to find a permanent home for the archive, said friend and foundation trustee Anthony Sylvester.

Although Prima’s five-decade career would take him away from his hometown to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York City, among other places, New Orleans was always in him.

“There’s a tendency to associate music-based archive repositories to music, but this is so much more. It truly reflects the multidisciplinary nature of archives.”

Melissa A. Weber, Hogan Archive curator

old black and white photo of Louis Prima singing into a microphone in a recording booth

Prima sings into a microphone in a recording booth. (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

Musical Roots

Born in 1910, Prima grew up in Treme near North Claiborne Avenue. This was the same New Orleans that fostered jazz legends like Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong.

“You had those sounds on the streets that he was privy to: the sounds of parades, horse-drawn carriages — he would hear what was going on in town, including Mr. Armstrong,” said Sylvester.

He grew up in a musical family, first learning to play the violin and later the cornet and trumpet. Prima would go on to play in high school bands at Jesuit and Warren Easton High School before pursuing a career as a professional performer.

A lucky — and furry — audience member gets an exclusive performance by Prima. (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

As a trumpeter and bandleader, Prima was heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, whom he often cited as an inspiration. At the same time, he would draw from his own cultural heritage to influence his music.

“Louis Prima integrates his love of and participation in the tradition of New Orleans jazz with both his upbringing and his sensibilities as an Italian-American in New Orleans, and bringing that together, he created a unique style,” said Weber.

There was a rich blend of cultures that saw Sicilian families like the Primas living side by side with African American and Creole families in New Orleans. Prima was exposed to a mashup of cultures in his youth. In the early 20th century, Sicilians were marginalized in New Orleans and considered on the fringe of mainstream White Anglo-Saxon society, said David Kunian (SLA ’13), the music curator at the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

This resulted in memorable musical collaborations. Sicilians made up a significant contingent in early jazz, even comprising almost half of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

That exposure to a variety of influences at a young age cemented who he became as a performer.

“Prima had this sense of being serious about the music, but he was also fun,” said Kunian. “He was like lots of other folks you find today, they make sure the music is right. But there is a sense of joy and fun that is inherent to New Orleans.”

In his hometown, he would perform at a variety of local venues including the Saenger Theatre. He would move on to New York in the mid-1930s where he made a name for himself on “Swing Street” (52nd Street), the heart of New York City’s jazz clubs at the time.

a collage of a photo of Prima on stage with Gia Maione Prima and a handwritten list of songs

Prima (center) performs with wife Gia Maione Prima (left) and Sam Butera (right), saxophonist and singer; A handwritten undated setlist appears in the background. (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

A Groundbreaking Performer

Prima’s music was groundbreaking in ways.

Prima would continue to celebrate his Italian-American heritage throughout the 1940s, with songs that spoke about Italian home life and culture. These could be considered controversial at a time when the United States was fighting Italy during World War II and anti-Italian sentiments were running high.

Nonetheless, Prima recorded several hits including “Angelina” and “Oh Marie” in which he crooned in Italian, “Una notte, una notte abbraciato” (One night, one night, embraced).

“Louis comes out and talks about Italian home life, putting it on the map so people could be proud of his immigrant heritage,” said Kunian. “It shows part of his brilliance and his talent that he could pull it off, although certainly in mainstream culture it took a minute for mass appeal.”

He eventually left New York to go to Los Angeles and began touring extensively throughout the United States and was one of the few White performers at the time contracted to perform in White and Black venues. Eventually, in the 1950s he began an extended residency at The Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas alongside his wife at the time, Keely Smith, and fellow New Orleanian Sam Butera. The band was prolific, performing nightly to sold-out audiences.

“His reviews as both a headliner and a bandleader were massively popular in Las Vegas especially,” said Weber.

dressing room photo of Prima and Gia with Frank Sinatra (wearing a tux)

Prima with his wife, Gia Maione Prima, and Frank Sinatra (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

Prima and Gia on stage with Sammy Davis Jr. who is singing

Prima (left) on stage during a performance with wife Gia Maione Prima (center) and Sammy Davis Jr. (right) (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

He would become the first New Orleanian to win a Grammy Award in the Recording Academy’s first ceremony in 1959, for his and Smith’s version of “That Old Black Magic.”

His presence as a bandleader mesmerized fans with both the music and dance moves that rang back to the footwork he often saw growing up on the streets in New Orleans.

“When I see Louis dance — it is New Orleans all over again. The music seems to ricochet through his body,” said Sylvester. “He dances like you’re supposed to. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a wonderful rhythm you so often see with the dancers in a second-line.”

In fact, it is that sense of movement and freedom, that led Prima to voice the orangutan, King Louie, in the 1967 Walt Disney animated movie “The Jungle Book,” singing “I Want To Be Like You” in the movie.

Prima and his band were flown to a sound stage in Los Angeles during the making of the movie and performed an impromptu second-line, that formed the blueprint for the second-line seen in “The Jungle Book,” said Sylvester.

“It’s a wonderful musical moment of ‘I Want To Be Like You,’” he said.

Prima plays trumpet in front of illustrated image of cartoon orangutan in jungle landscape

Louis Prima poses for a publicity photo for the 1967 Walt Disney movie “The Jungle Book,” in which he voices the orangutan, King Louie. (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

Archive Comes to Tulane

Prima’s love for his hometown didn’t just show up in his music and dancing.

“He always maintained his connection to New Orleans,” said Kunian.

Prima would eventually return to Louisiana and continued performing and touring until 1975. He died three years later and was buried in Metairie Cemetery next to his parents. He was survived by six children and his wife, Gia.

Prima plays trumpet for a group of nuns wearing full white dresses

Prima delights a group of nuns. (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

When the collection was originally donated to Tulane in 2017, the Gia Maione Prima Foundation funded the Louis Prima Room at Tulane University, a classroom used for archival instruction. In addition to donating the collection to Tulane University Special Collections, the foundation is funding Louis and Gia Prima Music Fellowships (currently in development) and a Prima Memorial Lecture Series, which will debut in February. The series will discuss American popular music including its origins in American jazz.

The collection included a lot of material that Prima collected over the years and kept in a storage facility on the Northshore, and the remainder was kept by Gia in her home, Sylvester said.

The archive is a treasure trove of memorabilia that isn’t just for fans of music. Among some of the items are correspondence with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and photographs of Prima, Keely Smith and Elvis Presley. There are photographs and other memorabilia from his time working on “The Jungle Book,” correspondence from record producers and promoters, and a vast record collection.

The materials are available for public research by appointment at Tulane University Special Collections.

old black and white photo of Prima showing a Wurlitzer jukebox to a man andhttps://library.tulane.edu/tusc woman

Prima shows fans his music on a Wurlitzer jukebox. (Louis Prima collection, HJA-041, Tulane University Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA)

Kunian curated an exhibit at the New Orleans Jazz Museum in 2019 called “The Wildest: Louis Prima Comes Home,” which included many of the artifacts and memorabilia from the Hogan Archive, showing a chronological history of his life and work.

Going through the materials was like a treasure hunt for Kunian. “It was so exciting, you never knew what was going to come up.”

Among the items, he was especially thrilled to find Prima’s cabaret card from his time performing in New York City. The cabaret card was a license required for musicians to perform in nightclubs in New York from prohibition up until the 1960s. If a performer was arrested or caught with drugs, they could lose their license and their ability to work in New York. Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker were among some of the jazz notables who lost their cabaret licenses.

Kunian had never seen one before he found Prima’s.

“The archive is ripe for everyone. Louis Prima is someone you can do serious scholarship on,” said Kunian.

For more information, contact Hogan Archive curator Melissa A. Weber at mweber3@tulane.edu. To learn more about Tulane University Special Collections, visit the TUSC website, email specialcollections@tulane.edu, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

By: Maria Clark

Winter 2024