Remembering Anita O'Day

The great jazz singer Anita O'Day died on Thanksgiving morning at the age of 87.   She was a dedicated artist, despite the fact that she claimed she took the stage name O'Day because "in pig Latin it meant dough, which I wanted to make." 

She had musical chemistry with the great trumpeter Roy Eldridge, when they were both in Gene Krupa's band.  You can get a sense of it in this "soundie" (soundies were early music videos meant to be played on special jukeboxes).  It's a hokey medium, but you can feel the energy between them.

("Boogie Ride" always sounded like a play on words to me, but for what?  It took me years to figure out they were probably riffing on the phrase "thanks for the buggy ride."  Buggies weren't completely forgotten in the 40's, after all.)

Now listen to her reinterpret "Sweet Georgia Brown" at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.  Sweet.  She seems a million years older - she'd been in jail a couple of times since then - but she was still under 40.

Like so many great jazz musicians, she knew how to take a melody apart and reconstruct it in unusual ways.

Anita O'Day fought drugs and alcohol her whole life, reportedly giving them up at aged 80 or so after a bad fall.   She was a major artist who never got all the recognition she deserved.

“All I know is that there are four beats to a bar and there are a million ways to phrase a tune.” –Anita O’Day

Comments

[KTray]

Anita O'Day was one of the few true female scat singers (Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan being the two most notable). She was an amazing talent that never got the recognition (or money) she deserved. For those of us who got to see her perform in Los Angeles at the Atlas Supper Club in 1999, we were treated to a living legend. Anita was truly a treasure. Rest in peace, dear lady.