No single act influenced both the jazz genre and the Las Vegas circuit like the legendary Louis Prima did, and with lively performances and infectious music, it's no wonder that Prima continues to be held as one of the most influential musical talents in American jazz and swing music.

Prima was born and raised in New Orleans, influencing his boogie-woogie and New Orleans-infused jazz style from the beginning. Growing up in a rambunctious Italian-Argentinean family, Prima took up the violin as a child, making the switch to the trumpet when he was a teenager only because his older brother left home on a tour with his band and left behind his spare instrument. Quickly making headway with the trumpet, Prima was greatly inspired by Louis Armstrong and King Oliver in his teens, landing a gig at a New Orleans theater at age 17. Eventually, Prima moved to New York to get in on the jazz scene of the early ‘30s, playing in a backup-type band called the New Orleans Gang before scoring big with the jazz crowd that included run-ins with Bing Crosby and Benny Goodman. Breaking up the New Orleans Gang in order to form his own big band the Gleeby Rhythm Orchestra in 1939, Prima kept wandering down the path of total jazz domination, his glints of an Italian background coming out in his music while the artist garnered a huge following. Hits like "Angelina," "Felicia No Capicia," "Bacciagaloop (Makes Love on the Stoop)" and "Please No Squeeza Da Banana" all illustrated Prima's Italian background, and the songs kept Prima's career a'spinnin'.

Straying from his big band gig to work with the icy Dorothy Keely (renamed Keely Smith) the duo eventually turned into a nightclub act, discovering Las Vegas somewhere in between acts on the road and bringing the early stages of rock & roll to the Vegas hotspot as "The Wildest Show in Vegas."