#4 The Wildest! by Louis Prima

I am not so proud to admit that upon first sight of the cover art to Louis Prima’s The Wildest! I didn’t know what to expect. I mean it matches the title of the album to a tee with his mouth wide open in some cavernous grin but as to the sort of music I was lost. It was only when I found out that he was the voice of King Louie from The Jungle Book that the penny dropped. Swing-Music.

Bearing that in mind I tried to keep an open mind and as such first found this a very enjoyable listen. As all good albums endeavour to do it opens with a foot-tapping flourish with the medley of Just A Gigolo and I Ain’t Got Nobody. The album flows well with many tracks begging to be danced along to, a flow interrupted by Spotify’s insistence of three adverts in a row.

For the most part this is a good album, but there is a certain song that just grated on me completely where upon I began to recoil as I knew what was coming. The song in question being The Lip whereby the repeated high-pitch wailing of some brass instrument caused such discomfort which can only be compared to the ‘ka-ching’ at the end of Grace Kelly by Mika.

The clear highlight of this album is Jump, Jive an’ Wail which should be instantly recognisable to any swing-music novice through it’s sheer usage in film and television as a way to portray the era. However, this album is very hard to rate.

Upon the first listen I thought that it was a fantastic toe-tapping romp, however upon the second listen found that a lot of the tracks had already lost their sparkle. When the thoughts of ‘when will this end’ begin to creep in with respect to an album with a running time of 32 minutes you realise that maybe this isn’t the album for you. As such the best bet, in my opinion is to split the difference between the two ratings from the first and second listens.

6.5/10

Fab Four:

Medley: Just A Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody
(Nothing’s Too Good) For My Baby
Jump, Jive an’ Wail
(I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead) You Rascal You