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LOUIS PRIMA JR. Blow WARRIOR WR16532

1. Blow

2. Go Let’s Go

3. New Orleans

4. Someday

5. That’s My Home

6. Fame and Glory

7. Might Be Crazy

8. Goody Two Shoes

9. I Just Wanna Have Fun

10. Robin Hood

11. Those Million Things

Louis Prima Jr.(vocals, trumpet) and the Witnesses: Leslie Spencer (vocals): Ted Schumacher (trumpet): Philip Clevinger (thombone):Steve Pandis (bass, Flugelhorn):Marco Palos (saxophone): Ryan McKay (guitar): Gregg Fox(piano, organ): A.D. Adams (drums)

Recorded 2014

WARRIOR WR16532 [41:03]

Here’s a nice try from Louis Prima Jr, but it just doesn’t really get off the ground. Or, rather, it does emulate to some small degree that invincible shuffle rhythm generated by his father’s band, but in doing so overlays it with so raucous and unrelenting a frame that things soon get wearying. Prima Jr is trumpeter and vocalist – it seems to be in the blood - and his band is competent though lacking in individuality. The big sound, roaring and ripping, is best taken in small doses. Hand clapping and club ambience rule, and when the music gets too adrenalin-filled – let’s take one example, New Orleans, a co-composition by the leader and Ryan McCaughey and other band members – things come perilously close to vulgarity.

It’s this crude element that does the album down. The rabble-rousing theatrics of I Just Wanna Have Fun would work well in a club, no doubt, but they are less infectious on disc. I wished that they’d taken the adrenalin level down a notch or two more often, because there are good things here, without doubt. There’s a sample of one of Prima Sr’s records (That’s My Home) that I found rather moving, and pep-filled swing on Might Be Crazy. The finale is a finger-snapper called Those Million Things, penned by the album’s producer, Jim Ervin. It works well. And the band – the Witnesses, after Sr’s own band, including Leslie Spencer, the singer - has internalised that big ‘Boots and Keely and Louis’ vibe pretty well. They just need to keep it down a bit and let it bubble up more naturally through the music.

Jonathan Woolf

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