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George and Ira Gershwin’s They All Laughed, which has become a jazz standard, was written for the 1937 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film, Shall We Dance. Since then Everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra to Bobby Darin has recorded it. Here is the original film version, with George Gershwin’s orchestrations, and Fred and Ginger dancing. Note that Ginger Rogers really does do at least part of what Fred does backwards and in heels.

Another voice immediately recognizable from Disney films is that of Louis Prima, who provided the voice of King Louie in Jungle Book. Prima was an Italian-American trumpeter born in New Orleans in 1910. He began playing trumpet in the local band led by his older brother Leon. Louis Prima’s career began with traditional New Orleans jazz, went on to swing, big band and even, by the 1960s, progressive rock. In each incarnation Prima’s wild antics and vivid personality were the main part of the show. He was a talented musician, however: scat singing, improvising on the trumpet, arranging and conducting the band and songwriting. In fact, Benny Goodman’s signature hit Sing Sing Sing was written by Louis Prma.

In 1949 Prima hired Keely Smith to sing with his band, then playing a regular stand in the lounge of the Las Vegas’ casino/nightclub, The Sahara. She became his fourth wife in 1953. Keely’s job was to keep a straight face while Prima cut up. As she sang Louis would interrupt, interjecting his own, wisecracking, subtext to her songs.

Prima and Keely worked as a duo until they were divorced in 1961. She went on to have a solo career, recording for the newly established Reprise records, under the direction of Nelson Riddle and singing duets with Frank Sinatra. Keely, now 76 years old, continues to perform occasionally. Prima died of complications from a brain tumor in 1978.

Thanks to Chris Greene, founder of the FDP for bringing up the subject of Prima and Keely.

People of a certain age can remember seeing Tiny Tim on the Tonight Show singing Tiptoe Through The Tulips in an amazing falsetto voice while strumming a ukulele. The inspiration for that awe inspiring performance, and for Tiny Tim’s only top twenty hit record, was Nick Lucas, who sang Tiptoe Through The Tulips in the 1929 Warner Brothers film Gold Diggers of Broadway, another in a long series of movies about people putting on a Broadway show. Tiptoe Through The Tulips became Lucas’ signature song. He sang it at Tiny Tim’s wedding, on the Tonight Show in 1969. Nick Lucas lived until 1982 and continued to perform most of his life.

Nick Lucas, born in 1897, played banjo, ukulele, mandolin and guitar and appeared in vaudeville with his brother, Frank, and friends, as Lucas Ukulele Trio and the Lucas Novelty Quartet, before 1920. He became a popular solo performer, playing intricate arrangements on a concert sized, Gibson guitar, later sold as the “Nick Lucas Special,” and singing in a style that resembles crooners like Bing Crosby. Lucas was also one of the earliest musicians to use a steel stringed guitar, in place of a tenor banjo, in a jazz band and probably the first to play single note melody on the guitar with a band. He has been called “the grandfather of jazz guitar.”

For comparison, here is Tiny Tim singing the same song: