It's a long way from the Famous Door

I was kinda surprised when I found this LP at the Breaking Free Rescue Mission, I didn’t know that Louis Prima was still recording in 1972. For some reason, I thought Jungle Book was the last thing he recorded. THE PRIMA GENERATION ‘72 wasn’t Louis Prima’s last LP but it’s close to the end of the line. Sam Butera is still on board and that’s good (get any Sam Butera records that you see). By this point the Witnesses line-up was not carved in stone, members were coming and going. The wah-wah guitar playing is not what you’d expect to hear on a Louis Prima record. But then I would never have expected to hear “Sympathy For The Devil” on a Louis Prima record, either. If that's what they're playing. Whatever it actually is, Jagger/Richards get the songwriting credit.

There a few songs that are keepers. There’s a cool medley of “Cold, Cold Heart/Little Mother”. There’s a pretty good version of “Up A Lazy River”, a song that Prima and the Witnesses had recorded years before. My favorite song on the record is an instrumental that Prima wrote with guitar player Ronnie James. It's a long way from the Famous Door club on 52nd Street.

My copy of THE PRIMA GENERATION'72 is on Brunswick Records. Prima’s website says that everything he released after 1964 was on his own Prima Records. Hmmmm. All of ‘em are was available on CD from the Louis Prima website.