Louis Prima Jr. & The Witnesses - Return Of The Wildest!

Album: Return Of The Wildest!
Size: 75,7 MB
Time: 32:28
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2012
Styles: Swing/Jump Blues
Art: Front, back

1. Oh Babe (3:28)
2. Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Feat. Sarah Spiegel) (2:20)
3. Night Train (2:59)
4. I Wan'na Be Like You (3:33)
5. A Sunday Kind Of Love (Feat. Sarah Spiegel) (4:38)
6. Las Vegas Woman (3:20)
7. I Want You To Be My Baby (Feat. Sarah Spiegel) (1:54)
8. You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me (Feat. Sarah Spiegel) (1:50)
9. Jump, Jive, An' Wail (3:42)
10. Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody (4:38)

Louis Prima Jr. has a larger-than-life legacy to live up to, but after the first notes of “Oh Babe,” the Prima Sr. track that opens this album, comes blasting out of the speakers, you’ll have no doubt that he’s up to the task. Louis Jr. has assembled a new band of Witnesses including vocalist Sarah Spiegel, and they add a razor-sharp rock & roll edge to the to ten of the tunes his dad made famous. “Bei Mir Bist du Schön,” a duet with Spiegel, follows the aforementioned “Oh Babe.” Wisely, Spiegel doesn’t try to outsing Keely Smith, but settles on a mischievous delivery that’s all her own.

Later on, her lead on “A Sunday Kind of Love” displays a simmering, low-key soul halfway between Vegas and a Detroit street corner. Louis Jr. is a powerful vocalist himself, exhibiting the same kind of irrepressible energy that made his dad such a formidable performer. The band rips through classics like “Las Vegas Woman,” “Night Train,” and “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” with an energy that would make his dad proud. Louis Jr. may not be the new King of Swing yet, but this album cements his place as a Crown Prince. This CD will blow the roof off of any party once you hit play and turn up the volume.

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Louis Prima Jr. & The Witnesses - Blow

Album: Blow
Size: 94,0 MB
Time: 40:44
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2014
Styles: Swing/R&B
Art: Front

1. Blow (2:40)
2. Go, Let's Go (4:19)
3. New Orleans (5:10)
4. Someday (Feat. Leslie Spencer) (5:10)
5. That's My Home (Feat. Louis Prima) (3:21)
6. Fame And Glory (2:51)
7. Might Be Crazy (Feat. Leslie Spencer) (3:24)
8. Goody Two Shoes (3:17)
9. I Just Wanna Have Fun (Feat. Leslie Spencer) (3:21)
10. Robin Hood (2:39)
11. Those Million Things (4:27)

Stamping a “Jr.” on the end of a famous name almost instantly implies a lesser version, a sub-par rendering of an icon who could never possibly live up to the original name preceding it. It’s a somewhat egomaniacal thing to do, even more so in the case of entertainers. For the average person, it allows their name to live on through their children. For an entertainer, and a famous one at that, it often sets an impossible standard to which the younger could never possibly hope to exceed (see: Frank Sinatra Jr).

With his second album, Blow, Louis Prima Jr. seeks to replicate the sound and feel perfected by his more famous father in the 1950s. While things start off promisingly enough with the instrumental title track, featuring a wild lead from saxophonist Ted Schumacher, they quickly descend into a pale imitation of the work of Prima Sr. The band (here dubbed the Witnesses, also the name of his father’s band) is able enough and willing to take on a decent big band-style swing tune, but the album’s overall slick production and even slicker playing buffs the raw energy of the elder Prima’s most popular recordings to a glossy shine.

Beyond that, Prima Jr.’s singing voice often oddly resembles Louis Prima doing David Lee Roth doing Louis Prima circa Diamond Dave’s Crazy From The Heat. It’s rather jarring at times and, when the original Louis Prima does make an appearance on the album in a duet with his son (“That’s My Home”), he more than ably outshines the younger performer and leaves the listener wanting more of that wild-style for which he was famous. While the tunes are by no means weak (“Someday”, one of several showcases for Keely Smith stand-in Leslie Spencer, is a particularly fine bluesy number), they have the unmistakable feel of regional dinner theatre: a watered down distillation that, while pleasant and vaguely familiar, is no substitute for the original. /John Paul, Pop Matters

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