Star Facts
  • Category Recording

    Address 7080 Hollywood Blvd.

    Ceremony date 09/22/1998

About
Keely Smith
Born:
1932-03-09,
Norfolk,
Virginia,
USA
Education:
NA
Ethnicity:
Caucasian
Death Date:
-0001-11-30
Addition Websites

Keely Smith

Keely Smith, is an American jazz and popular music singer who enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. She collaborated with, among other, Louis Prima and Frank Sinatra.

Smith showed a natural aptitude for singing at a young age. At 14, she started singing with a naval air station band led by Saxie Dowell. At 15, she got her first paying job with the Earl Bennett band.

Smith made her professional debut with Louis Prima in 1949 ; Smith played the “straight guy” in the duo to Prima’s wild antics and they recorded many duets. These include Johnny Mercer’s and Harold Arlen’s “That Ol’ Black Magic”, which was a Top 20 hit in the US in 1958. In 1959, Smith and Prima were awarded the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus for “That Ol’ Black Magic”. Her “dead-pan” act was a hit with fans. The duo followed up with the minor successes “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”, a revival of the 1937 Andrews Sisters hit. Smith and Prima’s act was a mainstay of the Las Vegas lounge scene for much of the 1950s.

Smith appeared with Prima in the 1959 film, Hey Boy! Hey Girl!, singing “Fever”, and also appeared in and sang on the soundtrack of the previous year’s Thunder Road. Her song in Thunder Road was “Whippoorwill”. Her first big solo hit was “I Wish You Love”. In 1961, Smith divorced Prima. She then signed with Reprise Records, where her musical director was Nelson Riddle. In 1965, she had Top 20 hits in the UK with an album of Beatles compositions, and a single, “You’re Breaking My Heart”. Sadly, her Reprise recordings have never been made available on CD.

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