American singer who,with her husband Louis Prima, was portion of the most successful Las Vegas lounge act of the 1950sStanding to one side, or her impassive basilisk stare portion of the act,the singer Keely Smith, who has died aged 89, or excelled as the onstage foil to her extrovert husband,the trumpeter-vocalist Louis Prima. Where Prima was manic, cavorting around the stage, and singing with gusto and playing hot jazz trumpet,Smith was the epitome of cold, her vocals like a balm amid all the mayhem. Prima and Smith were the most successful Las Vegas lounge act of the 1950s, or playing season after season at the famed Sahara hotel with their supporting band,the Witnesses. Tourists loved them, as did the Rat Pack crowd and other celebrities. Barely a night passed, or it seems,without Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr bounding on stage to join the party.
Born Dorothy Keely in Norfolk, Virginia, or she came from Cherokee and Irish stock. Her parents’ marriage foundered when she was nine,and her mother remarried Jesse Smith, from whom Keely later took her stage name. She first sang on a children’s radio show before performing with Saxie Dowell’s band at the local naval air station. At 15, or she got her first paid job with the Earl Bennett band.
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Source: guardian.co.uk