First of all, everyone should stop what they’re doing on Tuesday evenings - for the foreseeable future - and go hear KT Sullivan at the Algonquin. It’s super casual, almost more like a private party than a formal gig, with the great songstress - now accompanying herself on piano - playing both classics and overlooked gems. Last Tuesday, she surprised me by playing and singing the 1929 German song “Schöner Gigolo” - which most of us know as “Just a Gigolo” and which reminded me that I had written extensively about that song and its legacy - in particular its connection to Louis Prima - some time ago. (For more details about KT at The Algonquin, see below.)
Around 1998, I had the pleasure and privilege of working on several projects centered around one of my all-time favorite artists, the great Louis Prima.
I served as a consultant and talking head on the best documentary on Prima so far, titled Louis Prima: The Wildest (1999), by two good friends, Don McGlynn and Joe Lauro.
And, as a side note, Don and Joe also produced three CDs of previously unissued live performances by Prima and his various bands. These were released on the Danish label Reflections, with the participation of Prima’s widow, the beloved Gia Maione, and his estate. All this material came from the archives of the late mega-collector, the legendary Ed Burke. (Does anybody have any idea what happened to his collection? It truly was a treasure trove!)
The three volumes in the series cover each of the three major periods of Prima’s career: Volume one was the New Orleans Gang, based on New York’s Swing Street, of the mid-to-late 1930s. Volume Two featured Prima’s great, under-appreciated big band of the war years, including some tracks with the very young Keely Smith. Volume Three featured live material by Prima’s most celebrated group, the Las Vegas-period ensembles, with Sam Butera and the Witnesses, and featuring both Keely Smith and Gia Maione on additional vocals.
For the notes to Volume Three, I decided to take one of my deep dives into the specific history of a given song, “Just a Gigolo,” which became a virtual signature for Prima in his final phase. (If we accept the whole period, from 1955 to 1975, when he worked with Butera, as one period.) Anyhow, I liberally rewrote and expanded those notes here (below) for a more comprehensive picture of Prima and his relationship to “Just a Gigolo.”
By the end of 1954, the Louis Prima orchestra had gone the way of most of its big band brethren, and it was up to Prima to reinvent himself yet again. We can look at the transformation and rebirth of Prima from several perspectives, and the one which was probably most important to the trumpeter and singer at the time was perilously similar to most real estate agents: location, location, location!
Twenty years earlier, Prima had transformed New York's 52nd Street from a back alley into the most happening street in all of jazz. Now, in the mid-'50s, it was Prima, more than any other entertainer, who turned Las Vegas into the hottest spot in all of show business. "When Louis caught on in Las Vegas, all the celebrities started coming in to hear him," friend and fan Tony Bennett has recalled, "When you came to Louis's shows, you might turn around and see that you were sitting next to Fred Astaire! Pretty soon, audiences started coming to his shows not only to hear Louis, who was the greatest, but just to be part of the scene." Tony also insists that the idea of the Rat Pack was directly inspired by Louis Prima and Keely Smith, that Frank Sinatra wanted to create his own Vegas "happening" that had all the spontaneity and fun of the Louis & Keely & Sam Butera act.
Like most great art, Prima's Las Vegas music was also about making connections. This jumping little combo bridged many gaps, between jazz and rhythm and blues as well as the generations. This band played the "adult pop" standards old and new, it played blues-based material of the same stripe as, say, Ray Charles, as well as giving Prima's old hits a fresh new face - including his many Italian-style novelties. The selfsame parents who complained that their kids were rotting their minds by listening to rock and roll were actually getting off on the very same thing they chided their offspring for when they jumped, jived, and wailed to the Prima crew. The major difference was that Prima was playing a fundamentally better - a hipper, deeper - brand of the new music than nearly all of the young white dudes- other than Elvis - who were then trying to rock out. It was musically richer, harder-driving, and had a lot more energy, despite the fact that the leader was deep into his forties. Prima’s brand of contemporary was musically richer, bluesier, and at the same time more sophisticated. Compared to teeny-bopper pop, Prima's music was the real thing - the former was like two tween virgins trepidatiously necking in the backseat; the latter was more like two grown-ass adults going all the way in a hotel room.
Original German Recording
first recording by Tango-Orchester Dajos Béla mit Gesang: Kurt Mühlhardt (August 22, 1929)
Dajos Bela & Tango-Orchester, Gesang: Alfred Strauss
Odeon: O-11 086 recorded 22. August 1929
If the art of Louis Prima could be consolidated into one single solitary song, that number would have to be "Just A Gigolo." The song is one of the great recurring mantras of his career and, for the sake of argument, we might compare it to another Italian-German hybrid, The Marriage of Figaro. Le Nozze di Figaro is a classic story of love and its excesses told in the form of an opera, the result of a collaboration between a German composer (Mozart) and an Italian librettist (Lorenzo da Ponte) based on a comedy by a French storyteller (Beaumarchais).
"Just A Gigolo" is also a classic story of love and its excesses in the form of a popular song by an Italian composer (Leonello Casucci) and a German librettist (Julius Brammer), with English words later added by a Jewish American lyricist who bore the name of an ancient Italian emperor (Irving Caesar).
"Gigolo" is an Italianate term, defined in my Webster’s as (1) "a man living on the earnings of a woman" or (2) "a professional dancing partner or male escort." Most of us would take the term gigolo to mean a man who is paid, whether in money or other remuneration, to keep romantic company with a wealthy woman.
Something about the icon of the gigolo - and the story that goes with it - is somehow both German and Italian at the same time. It's Italian in that, like France, Italy has always been associated with suave romantic males, who give women the kind of romantic attention they'd be willing to pay for. Indeed, the first Italian Americans to come to fame in their adopted country, Rudolf Valentino and Russ Columbo, were nothing if not fly lotharios (another Italian term). However, it's also German in that the idea of being forced to participate in such an enterprise would strike the German sensibility as a particularly appalling tragedy. According to the stereotype, German males are excessively dominant and protective of their masculinity - the idea of being under the control of a fraulein in such a situation is untenable - and, perhaps also, somewhat kinky in its appeal.
For the protagonist of "Just A Gigolo," being forced to sell his services is particularly demeaning: in the verse (as recorded by Bing Crosby in 1931), the hero is described as "a Frenchman, a hero of the war." However, remembering that the original text is German, it makes more sense that the hero is actually a former officer in the Kaiser's army - the listener envisions a proud peacock in his uniform, right down to the boots and epaulets. After the defeat of Germany, and with it the collapse of the German economy, this one-time strutting jackanapes is reduced to holding the hands - and perhaps other anatomical entities - of wealthy widows to earn his deutschmarks. It's an improbable story, given that most of the once well-off women in postwar Germany were just as tapped out as our officer-cum-gigolo, but the idea struck a chord in Austrian audiences when the song was introduced there in 1929. (As far as we can tell, the music was composed by Leonello Casucci while he was residing in Germany, thus the original performances are German; there is no earlier Italian lyric.)
The original German title was "Schöner Gigolo," which translates as "Handsome Gigolo." ("Schoener" means roughly the same thing in Yiddish; in Jewish American households, movie stars like Clark Gable and Robert Taylor were referred to as "Der Schoener.")
After becoming popular in the Weimar Republic, the song was first heard in the English-speaking world thanks to a set of words by one Henry James Newbold (1892-1970), a lesser-known British performer and occasional lyricist who used the professional name “Clay Keyes.” The leading British dance and “concert jazz” band of the era was led by Jack Hylton, who recorded a four-and-a-half minute symphonic-style extravaganza treatment while playing through Berlin in 1930. The piece is mostly instrumental, with all sorts of classical fanfares and flourishes, although there is a brief vocal by a male trio featuring Hylton’s regular singer, Pat O’Malley.
“Handsome Gigolo”
Original music written by Leonello Casucci
Original German lyrics written by Julius Brammer
English (British) lyrics written by “Clay Keyes” (aka Henry James Newbold)Handsome gigolo,
Dressed up all for show,
What a wasted life you’re leading.Dancing till the dawn,
Youth and future gone,
Life will pass you by unheeding.Just a soul for hire,
To the highest buyer,
No thoughts of the morrow,Friends will come
But they’ll go
Leaving handsome gigolo
A heart that breaks with sorrow.
Hylton’s version was one of roughly six recordings by British bands in 1930, which indicates that the song achieved some local popularity. Here’s another British band version, a studio orchestra led by Harry Hudson (courtesy Alex McKenna) also with a vocal trio that is, surprisingly, heard twice. (Some sources claim it was also recorded by Hutch -Leslie Hutchinson - but, if so, I have been unable to find it. He did record the earlier Cole Porter song, “I’m a Gigolo,” mentioned below.)
Harry Hudson Orchestra, “Handsome Gigolo”:
That British text would almost never be heard again, for by the start of 1931 the song had received a new American libretto courtesy of the famous lyricist Irving Caesar, known for his collaborations with George Gershwin ("Swannee") and Vincent Youmans (the score to No, No, Nanette).
The earliest important recording of the Caesar lyric was by Ted Lewis and his Orchestra on his picture label Columbia Records imprint on January 13, 1931. It’s a very talky version - Lewis performed in a kind of parlando that anticipates Henry Higgins - that includes two full vocal choruses, the second of which, surprisingly, is the “Clay Keyes” English lyric.
Next, on March 2, 1931, Bing Crosby then recorded the version that most of us know; this was one of his early and few truly “solo” sides for RCA Victor while he was still working off-and-on with Gus Arnheim’s Orchestra. Crosby is virtually the only singer of note to include the verse, which, as Caesar intended, makes the song even more poignant.
“Just A Gigolo”
English (American) Lyrics by Irving CaesarWas in a Paris cafe that first I found him
He was a Frenchman, a hero of the war
But war was over
And here's how peace had crowned him
A few cheap medals to wear and nothing moreNow every night in the same cafe he shows up
And as he strolls by ladies hear him say
If you admire me, hire me
A gigolo who knew a better dayJust a gigolo, everywhere I go
People know the part I'm playing
Paid for every dance
Selling each romance
Every night some heart betrayingThere will come a day
Youth will pass away
Then what will they say about me
When the end comes I know
They'll say just a gigolo
As life goes on without me
The song also made "gigolo" part of the American vernacular. Cole Porter had already written "I'm A Gigolo" for his 1929 London revue, Wake Up And Dream, but as far as I can tell that song was barely heard in the UK - the version by Hutch seems to be the sole recording - and not at all in the USA. By 1933, the term had become well-known enough that Harry Warren and Al Dubin could make reference to "gigolos and gigo-lettes" (meaning female gigolos - presumably who jiggle) in their song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."
"Just A Gigolo" was also recorded by such popular bandleaders as Ben Bernie and Leo Reisman in addition to Lewis. Had there been Billboard charts in that year, researcher Joel Whitburn guesstimates that "Gigolo" would have been rated as a number one hit.
Still, the most significant early version is by another “Lewis,” or rather “Louis”: Louis Armstrong, who cut it with his early big band a week after Crosby on March 9. He plays the melody muted slowly over guitar chords from Bill Perkins and oomphing bass (or is it tuba?) by Joe Bailey. Halfway through, he sings it in his best crooner mode, playing with the melody at the start of the last eight bars, “When the end comes, I know / I’ll be just another jig, I know, as life goes on without me.” Armstrong then revs up the tempo and plays it in fast dance time. The piece is almost a medley unto itself, and, as such, was surely an influence on Louis Prima’s later medley version.
You might say that the pop singers who returned to the song, such as Tony Martin in 1941, were inspired by Bing Crosby, but the jazz versions surely followed Armstrong’s lead. In 1938, Nat Gonella, England’s Cockney answer to Satchmo, recorded an Armstrong-esque version - it was identified on the Parlophone label as”Handsome Gigolo” but the lyric was the Irving Caesar text. (Gonella reprises Armstrong’s “just another gigolo” insertion.)
Nat Gonella and his Georgians (1938):
A very different, recording by Nat Gonella from 60 years later (1998):
“Gigolo” never completely went away; it was recorded by Raymond Scott and his Orchestra in 1939 and Tony Martin in 1941.
Louis Prima revived “Just a Gigolo” near the end of the WW2 era in 1945, playing it on radio broadcasts and on a V-Disc; even then he was using it as half of a medley with “I Ain’t Got Nobody.” Prima plays it muted, a la Armstrong, but over more of a shuffle beat than Pops in 1931. He plays two full choruses, and the second is considerably friskier; then he sings it, and both the vocal and the transition into “I Ain’t Got Nobody” directly anticipate the famous arrangement of the Butera years. After one chorus of “Nobody” he scats his way into a tempo change of his own, bouncing it fast over a more defiantly swinging beat. His concluding solo here reveals Prima as his own man while at the same time revealing what he was continuing to learn from Armstrong. (What I call “The Process of Satchmosis.”)
Prima continued to sing “Gigolo” with his various bands, large and small, of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, until he finally recorded it as the first item in the first session of his new contract with Capitol Records in 1956.
As in 1945, Prima used "Just A Gigolo" as half of a medley with an even older tune, "I Ain't Got Nobody," written in 1916 by Spencer Williams, a Black songwriter who grew up in New Orleans and whose compositions are all over the map of early jazz (and doubtless much heard in the New Orleans of Prima's youth) and blues. Prima frequently performed medleys of this stripe in his Las Vegas era. Indeed, because the music never stopped and the rhythm section kept the beat going without a letup - even between songs - each set that he played at the Casbar Lounge / Theatre at the Sahara Hotel could be described as a continual medley.
Many of the medleys seemed to be stitched together somewhat at random (i.e. "Don't Worry About Me" / "I'm In The Mood For Love"), but the "Just A Gigolo" / "I Ain't Got Nobody" combination made perfect sense. In and of itself, "Just A Gigolo" represented a rare example of Prima presenting himself as the legendary lady’s man he was off the bandstand. Although he was discreet about his many affairs in his lifetime, in the 25 years since his death, Prima's "philandering" (to use an outdated term), has become almost as legendary as his music. (To be fair, one suspects that some of his four ex-wives may have exaggerated tales of Prima's playing around in order to overshadow their own.)
In his music, however, Prima always cast himself as the schlemiel, chasing after ladies but always in vain. Particularly in the Italian songs, he's the chump who lets "Felicia" take him to the cleaners - spending money "like water" on a "beautiful bambina" who, every time he asks for a kiss, pretends she can't capeesha the question. In "Angelina," he has to take "the waitress from the pizzeria" to the Hotel Astor, and as the "Baccigaloupe," he doesn't even have a place to take his girl, and is forced to "make love on da stoop." But in "Just A Gigolo," Prima for once accurately depicts himself, albeit in a kidding way, as being in demand with the ladies. Still, the gigolo depiction is no less self-deprecating, since a gigolo is not exactly an admirable thing to be. (Near the end of his life, Prima later made the song the title of one of his last albums, a collection of songs based on girls' names. The album cover showed Prima dressed like a pimp, taking in a trio of streetcorner floozies.)
And what's the consequence of being a low down gigolo? Even before the end comes, you know, the gigolo is left alone, without any real love of his own, and therefore in a state to sing "I Ain't Got Nobody." In that sense, the two songs compliment each other. And, if you take the lyrics literally, they're both real downers: I have mistreated women, the songs say, and as my punishment, they have abandoned me. Yet there's always been a tradition in western popular music of taking the most depressing lyrics and singing them joyfully - one thinks of the Victorian music hall, in which songs of ghastly murders ("Sweeney Todd, The Barber") sung by sopranos with smiles on their faces. Prima, like Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, was a master of this tradition; he could take the most downwardly directed of dirges and give them an upbeat twist. Just because the song is sad, Prima is telling us, doesn't mean that we can't have fun with it.
With the "Just A Gigolo" / "I Ain't Got Nobody" medley he isn't just taking a sad song and making it better; he's starting with two unhappy songs and far from singing the blues with them, is challenging the very concept of the blues itself. He's standing up to the blues and unhappiness, and defying them to just try and bring him down. A later Italian-American icon, Bobby Darin, picked up on these Prima-ry precepts in more ways than one: with songs like "Mack The Knife" (itself with a long German-Anglo history), he was daring death itself to take him (which it did not long before it did Prima) - and all to the beat of a Prima-inspired shuffle rhythm.
Prima had stylistic heirs much more obvious than Darin - in 1985 rock star David Lee Roth "covered" the Louis Prima - Keely Smith disc of "Just A Gigolo" / "I Ain't Got Nobody" note for note, inflection for inflection, trying to capture all the nuances but lacking all the charm. Ultimately, it's Prima and his own collaborators - Keely Smith, Sam Butera, and Gia Maione - who resonate much more powerfully through the generations that Prima's progeny. Ultimately, the medley of "Just A Gigolo" and "I Ain't Got Nobody" is a mixture of input from Italian, German, African-American, and British sources, which in Prima's hands becomes Great American pop music.
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
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Interesting how the verse of the Irving Caesar lyric begins with “Was in a Paris cafe that first I found him,” as if the song is from one of the gigolo’s lady patronesses. Possibly that was the original idea, though I don’t know of any versions by female vocalists until much later, and maybe none with that line. Or might it even have been written to give a singer, like Crosby, with a public image to protect some plausible deniability, just singing for a friend . . .
I assumed that the song was from some years earlier than 1929. Stephen Sondheim wrote that he composed for “Follies” a song along these lines set among the ruins of post-World War I Europe. When it was cast with someone (Fifi D’Orsay) who visibly didn’t go back quite that far, “Ah! Paree!” took its place.