There are plenty of reasons that some of the greatest music arrangers and conductors (like Billy May & Nelson Riddle) chose to work with Keely Smith at Capitol Records in the late 1950s. Reasons being the lady could sing, the lady could swing, the lady could deliver a gorgeous song and make your heart soar with a voice to rival any of the leading female vocalists of the day. Keely's voice was bright and strong, with nearly perfect pitch and an occasional Virginia drawl. Keely is still best remembered for her marriage to Louis Prima and the duets that featured in their legendary stage shows ("That Old Black Magic," et al.) Yet it's her solo Capitol recordings, Politely! and Swingin' Pretty, that caught my ear in a friend's basement where we amused ourselves by pulling out her mother's favorite old LPs. I knew nothing about Keely then, and assumed she was relegated to the heap of singers past who'd stopped performing around the time I was born. Boy, was I ever wrong.
Keely did vanish for a couple of decades; she stopped recording & performing while she focused on raising her kids. In 1985 she recorded a comeback album, I'm In Love Again and bagged a Grammy nomination in the process. Hearing that album, I fell in love with Keely's voice all over again. In the early 90s I first saw her perform live at Rainbow & Stars, a supper club at the top of Rockefeller Center. She was marvelous; a consummate performer with a surprising shtick to her stage patter, alternating gorgeous singing with deadpan jokes about Sicilian lovers and pasta. A few years later, in a bit of true serendipity, I got to see Keely perform in Las Vegas at the Sands, assisted by her bandleader of the 1950s, Sam Butera. It was like being transported back in time 40 years--and one of the best live shows I've ever witnessed.
What makes my experience of Keely so much richer is that she's kept on recording and performing--well into her seventies. Shockingly, her clarion voice has mellowed very little and though her vibrato has widened just a bit, the near-perfect pitch and sweet high range are practically carbon copies of the sound on her Capitol recordings. Keely's voice is truly one of the rare miracles of showbiz (and a good deal of care, I'm sure; Keely swears she never smoked or drank.)
As recently as 2007, Keely was playing two shows a night at New York's swanky Cafe Carlyle. I caught that show with Wanda & Steve--almost 15 years after we'd see Keely with Sam Butera in Vegas. Her stage presence was much the same: surprisingly raunchy patter (from a grandmother!) between sets of sweet, soulful singing. It still surprises me how relatively unsung the glory of Keely's solo work has been--she is, without a doubt, one of the Greats.
Required Listening: Politely! (1958), Swingin' Pretty (1959), Keely Sings Sinatra (2001), Keely Swings Basie-Style (2002), Vegas '58 Today (2005)
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