Tulane Bands and TUSC collaborate to celebrate Louis Prima

This year, Tulane Bands and Tulane University Special Collections (TUSC) collaborated to celebrate Louis Prima via music performances and primary source literacy.

During fall semester football games, including Tulane's Homecoming and Thanksgiving Day games, the Tulane University Marching Band included a tribute to the influential New Orleans-born entertainer profiled in the Winter 2024 edition of The Tulanian. During each feature, the band performed Prima’s popular recordings “Just a Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody,” “I Wanna Be Like You” from Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book, and “Sing, Sing Sing” with guest trumpeter John Michael Bradford, MA ’24.

Earlier in the semester, 101 students from the Tulane Bands program learned about Prima and archival research by attending TUSC workshops that solely utilized primary source materials from the Louis Prima papers, a collection donated by the Gia Maione Prima Foundation to the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz in 2017. The Tulane Bands program includes musicians and Shockwave Dance Team and Color Guard members, and is open to both Tulane and Loyola University students.

The Louis Prima papers include 38.92 linear feet of personal papers, business papers, correspondence, sheet music, photographs, publicity materials, ephemera, and audiovisual materials related to Prima’s career and life. The collection is available for public research and can be accessed via appointment at TUSC, located in Jones Hall on the uptown campus of Tulane University.

Louis Prima’s entertainment career spanned five decades, and encompassed music writing and performance, motion pictures, and pioneering recording industry practices as a bandleader and record label owner. With trumpet and vocals being his primary instruments, became a leading ambassador of New Orleans jazz beginning in the 1930s, and a popular Las Vegas headliner beginning in the 1950s. Walt Disney Pictures based its 1967 Oscar-nominated, animated film, The Jungle Book, on Prima, who provided his voice for the character of orangutan “King Louis.” He was the first New Orleanian to win a GRAMMY, awarded during the Recording Academy’s first ceremony in 1959, and given in the Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus category for Louis Prima & Keely Smith’s version of “That Old Black Magic.”

For more information about the Prima papers at TUSC, contact Hogan Archive curator Melissa A. Weber at mweber3@tulane.edu. To learn more about Tulane Bands, contact Barry Spanier, Director of Bands, at bspanier@tulane.edu.

Published November 27, 2024

Photo caption (top right): Tulane Bands students view archival materials from the Louis Prima papers during a workshop in the Louis Prima Room, the instruction classroom of Tulane University Special Collections. Photo by Melissa A. Weber, August 12, 2024.

Tulane Bands students view archival materials from the Louis Prima papers during a workshop in the Louis Prima Room, the instruction classroom of Tulane University Special Collections. Photo by Melissa A. Weber, August 5, 2024.

Members of the Tulane University Marching Band and Shockwave Dance Team perform a tribute to Louis Prima during halftime at Tulane's Homecoming football game. Photo by Kenny Lass, Tulane University Communications and Marketing, November 9, 2024, at Yulman Stadium.

Guest trumpeter John Michael Bradford, MA ’24, performs a tribute to Louis Prima with the Tulane University Marching Band during the football halftime show at Homecoming. Photo by Kenny Lass, Tulane University Communications and Marketing, November 9, 2024, at Yulman Stadium.