Louis Prima - Later Years

Later Years

Prima had a variety of family loss to deal with at the end of his career. His father died the same year as the divorce with Keely. His mother died in the winter of 1965, for which he partly blamed Keely.

In 1962 he tried to form his own recording company called “Prima One Records.” He tried to fill Keely's spot with Gia Maione, a waitress who was 21 years old. He did his best to make her famous by producing her first album “This Is … Gia.” It was funded entirely by him, and it was not very successful at all. This was daunting to Prima because he was always trying to advance himself and his performers. With Gia, Prima had a daughter and his only son Louis Prima Jr. He was also in the middle of making appearances in Las Vegas and promoting the film “Twist All Night.” By this point, the band was putting out a markedly different and more contemporary sound, with electric organs and synthesizers, even dabbling in progressive rock.

In 1967 Prima's distinctive voice and jazzy delivery landed him a role in Walt Disney's animated feature The Jungle Book, as the raucous orangutan King Louie. He performed the hit song "I Wanna Be Like You" on the soundtrack, leading to the recording of two albums with Phil Harris: The Jungle Book and More Jungle Book, on Disneyland Records. He can also be heard on the soundtrack of another cartoon feature, The Man Called Flintstone.

He suffered a mild heart attack in 1973. In 1975, following headaches and episodes of memory loss, Louis Prima sought medical attention, and found out he had a brain stem tumor. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and went into a coma following surgery to remove the tumor. He never recovered, and died three years later, having been moved back to New Orleans. He was buried in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans; his gray marble crypt is topped by a figure of Gabriel, the trumpeter-angel, sculpted in 1997 by Russian-born sculptor Alexei Kazantsev. The inscription on the crypt's door quotes the lyrics from one of his hits: "When the end comes, I know, they'll all say 'just a gigolo' as life goes on without me. Lovingly, your little family..."