Anita O’Day’s

Anita O’Day’s

Anita O’Day’s name was habitually associated with Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan in the 1940s and ’50s. It isn’t her lack of talent that makes her less famous today maybe. Probably it’s because she sang most of the time and too much heroin; she didn’t care about fame either. I came home from this movie and started downloading tracks into my iPod.

The film record of her career isn’t as extensive as it is for many other singers. She just didn’t care about publicity. If you’ve seen her on a screen, it was probably in “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” the legendary doc about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Standing in the sun, wearing a big floppy hat, a cocktail dress and glass slippers yes, glass slippers she sang “Sweet Georgia Brown” as few songs have ever been sung; it is considered one of the best performances in jazz history.

For jazz singing she did not even have all tools needed. In an interview she taped for “Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer” not long before her death at 87 in 2006, she says that during tonsillectomy surgery they accidentally removed her uvula which denies ability to sustain vibrato necessary for proper jazz phrasing but listening to her I’d say she found a work-around.

Without regret or apology, she observes that her life was a “jazz life.” She left home young, was hired by Gene Krupa on sight, toured with Krupa, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, was addicted to heroin for 15 years, did four months for marijuana possession drank too much never had no job usually broke had four marriages and several abortions stayed longest with drummer who wasn’t husband recorded lotsa records on premier jazz label Verve charted big hit Japan Sweden sorry my vibrato just broke.

Surviving it was her most astonishing accomplishment, remarkable as her life was. It wasn’t as tragic as Billie Holiday’s, but that wasn’t for lack of trying. After an overdose, she was once declared dead in an emergency room. You may think you’re not eager to watch a woman in her mid-80s remembering old times, but that would be before you heard her singing “The Nearness of You.” This is one great dame. In her heyday, she had a fresh, perky Doris Dayish face, just the right slight overbite and she looked smart when she was singing; she didn’t smile a whole lot.

A Chicago native O’Day was a serious musician. Listen to her discussing eighth notes and why they work for her. Her alto voice could sound like an instrument and she fit right in with a sax. She didn’t sing over a band; her voice was one of its soloists. In duets, she was a collaborator. Oscar Peterson could play the piano about as fast as it could be played and she once raced him to the end of a song never dropped a syllable unless she intended to and finished first

The movie also contains footage of her first hit with Krupa, a 1941 duet with Roy Eldridge on trumpet. The combination of a white singer and black musician was dangerous then; Krupa kept the tune in the program when he toured the South. She doesn’t seem very impressed by any risks they were taking. “All the materials exist for ‘Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer,’ and it is invaluable.

And it is flawed too many performances are interrupted, the talking heads must hide a third of the screen, hardly matters because here was an artist, and she enjoyed her life; she didn’t complain at the time, she didn’t complain when she went cold turkey, she didn’t complain in her 80s. There’s an interview where Bryant Gumbel presses her about her disorderly life which was no secret but she doesn’t bite. As if it’s just obvious, she tells him, “That’s the way it went down, Bryant.”

Watch Anita O’Day’s For Free On Gomovies.