Life has a funny way of coming full circle sometimes. Someone I don’t know writes me about a piece I had placed in the Red Hook Star Review on Louis Prima a few weeks prior. That someone, my new friend Charlie Diliberti, then tells me that Louie Prima’s son, Louis Prima Jr, tours around the country playing New Orleans style Jazz, like his father. In fact, he knows Louie Prima Jr, he says. Would I like to meet him? Charlie also tells me that he speaks Sicilian and that he’s from a town not too far from where Louie Prima’s family is from in Sicily. Then we write back and forth about our Sicilian origins.
I’m going to pause here for a moment to connect the time travel elements of all of this. The piece that Charlie reads is inspired by my leaning backward in time to explore my dad’s musical interests. He was a big fan of Louie Prima. And by writing the piece, it connects me to the future. To new friends.
A few weeks later, Charlie writes saying that Louis Prima Jr & The Witnesses are playing at The Cutting Room in Manhattan. Would I like to meet him there? Of course, I say yes.
When I get to The Cutting Room, Charlie has filled three tables with friends and family. He introduces me and my twenty-three-year-old son, Thelonious, whom I drag along, to the people at the table. They are friendly, talking and having fun.
Like in Spinal Tap, when Prima Jr and the Witnesses take the stage, their set starts at volume eleven. Not ten. Eleven. From the first note, they erupt on the stage, bucking and kicking, stomping and romping. Never missing a single note. They are smack on.
Meanwhile, the room is eager and wanting, but they haven’t yet caught up to the high velocity of the band. They’re still eating, having only had a few drinks. Prima Jr is hopping around and singing, like his father. The band follows his antics, bouncing on one foot in unison, while playing their instruments with incredible accuracy.
And like his father, Prima Jr has a lead sax player and a female vocalist. Marco Palos, lead sax player and arranger, also writes some of the songs. Kate Curran, like Prima Sr’s vocalists, can hit the high notes and make it sound easy. And she too plays the on-stage theatrics. She’s the steady to Prima Jr’s wild gymnastic performance. She’s shapely and exotic, hand on hip like Bettie Bop.
[pullquote]The sound level, now at twelve, threatens to blow the roof off the venue.[/pullquote]The band then plays a few of Marco’s songs from their two albums The Wildest and Blow. The songs are reminiscent of Prima Sr’s style, but they are new and fresh. Marco is impeccably dressed, tall and handsome. He is debonair expertly playing his sax, like it’s a walk in the park. Meanwhile, the whole band is singing harmonies. And the whole band is stomping on one foot now, as if trying to tilt the stage. I imagine that even the street outside The Cutting Room is on a slant, parked cars rolling down the street. I hold on tight to my beer, so it won’t slide off the table.
The sound level, now at twelve, threatens to blow the roof off the venue.
As Louie and the band bounce and hop around, the venue is yet hot and humid. It’s a rainy and sticky night. Somehow there isn’t enough air-conditioning flowing into the room. All the players are mopping their faces with rags. I’m sweating too and I’m not running laps like they are.
Four songs in, the audience is now warming up. The band’s intoxicating energy is infectious. The audience is no longer just passively watching. They are part of the show.
As I look around, most people in the audience are out of their seats, some are whipping napkins around over their heads. This is a party. This ain’t no foolin’ around.
I get up to go to the bathroom. When I come back, I’m grabbed by the hand and spun by a woman I don’t know. Now I’m dancing, too.
Even my son Thelonious is bopping around in his seat. He winces at me dancing with a stranger, as if saying Dad, how could you? You look ridiculous.
After a break, the band comes back on, taking turns singing songs. They are all excellent singers. I now notice that Prima Jr has slipped behind the drum kit. Everybody plays every instrument in this band, it seems. They perform lively versions of songs like “Born on the Bayou” by Credence and Elton John’s “Saturday,” revealing their rock music roots.
The crowd is now almost all out of their seats. It’s literally pandemonium. Now fully lathered up, Prima Jr returns to the mic, singing a few of Sr’s old hits like “Just a Gigolo” and “Buona Sera”; the audience is now totally wild, singing along with every lyric, punching their fists with every stomp and stop. I see two guys in the audience fall to the ground while dancing drunkenly. This scene has become an orgiastic Mardi Gras.
After their last song, Prima Jr comes off stage. He has literally just run a marathon. Still wearing a fancy Vegas performer suit, he walks toward me. I ask him if I can take a picture. Even though he’s been running on stage for two hours, in the picture I take, he looks cool and relaxed. I, on the other hand, look haggard, like I’ve run into a Mack truck.
After the picture, I thank him with a hug. I think to myself that we’re about the same age. Our parents would be about the same age. It’s as if our fathers introduce us from the past. Wait, how could that be?
I leave The Cutting Room thinking about how things come full circle. How little gestures or events can change the future. How life can be so ironic. That I’m looking at a picture of me and Louie Prima Jr which I wish I could show my dad – mainly because he’s responsible for all of this.
Sometimes life just makes sense in some ways that can’t be explained.
Louis Prima Jr’s website: https://www.louisprimajr.com/
The Cutting Room website: http://thecuttingroomnyc.com/
Mike Fiorito’s most recent book, Call Me Guido, was published in 2019 by Ovunque Siamo Press. Call Me Guido explores three generations of an Italian American family through the lens of the Italian song tradition. Mike’s short story collections, Hallucinating Huxley and Freud’s Haberdashery Habit, were published by Alien Buddha Press. He is currently an Associate Editor for Mad Swirl Magazine.
