Anita O'Day

Few female jazz vocalists could rival the hard-swinging Anita O'Day in exuberance or technical command across improvisation, range, tonal shading, and rhythmic instinct, qualities that placed her among the era's most engaging performers. Her initial big-band engagements upended the conventional portrait of a restrained woman singer, as she matched the instrumentalists' intensity note for note, most vividly on her exchanges with Roy Eldridge during the Gene Krupa date that produced "Let Me Off Uptown." Following her solo debut in the mid-1940s she absorbed bop innovations and cut more than a dozen standout vocal albums for Verve across the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the obstacles of heavy drinking during her prime years and subsequent drug addiction, she staged a return and kept performing into the new millennium.

Born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago and raised chiefly by her mother, she entered her first marathon-dance contest while still barely a teenager. Periods on the road alternated with returns home before she shifted from dancing to singing at those events. After unhappy short stays with Benny Goodman and Raymond Scott, she secured a spot in Gene Krupa's band in 1941. Weeks later Krupa added trumpeter Roy Eldridge, and the resulting trio generated strong impact on such hits as "Let Me Off Uptown," "Boogie Blues," and "Just a Little Bit South of North Carolina." A brief interval with Woody Herman preceded her return to Krupa until the band dissolved in 1943. She then joined Stan Kenton and featured on the leader's first major success, the 1944 hit "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine." Another stretch with Krupa preceded her solo launch in 1946; accompanied by drummer John Poole she scored a modest success the following year with the novelty "Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip."

Her profile surged after the 1955 release Anita, also issued as This Is Anita. Far more prominent on the jazz circuit than in pop settings, she appeared at festivals and specialized concerts alongside Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, and George Shearing. Worldwide recognition followed her set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, preserved in the film Jazz on a Summer's Day.

Nearly twenty Verve albums from the 1950s and 1960s established her as one of the period's most original, influential, and commercially viable singers, arguably second only to Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. She collaborated with varied arrangers and ensembles, including a robust Billy May partnership on Anita O'Day Swings Cole Porter with Billy May, an intimate date with the Oscar Peterson Quartet titled Anita Sings the Most, several mainstream sessions with the Buddy Bregman Orchestra such as Pick Yourself Up, Anita, a cool-toned project with Jimmy Giuffre called Cool Heat, a Latin session with Cal Tjader issued as Time for Two, and a joint album with the Blue Note trio the 3 Sounds. By 1967 the combined toll of heroin addiction, its attendant lifestyle, and relentless touring brought about a physical breakdown.

After several years overcoming alcohol and drug dependencies she reappeared at the 1970 Berlin Jazz Festival and issued a stream of live and studio recordings in the early 1970s, many captured in Japan and some issued on her own Emily Records imprint. Her 1983 autobiography High Times, Hard Times offered characteristically candid reflections on her eventful history. Although her voice slowly weakened she continued to record through the 1970s and 1980s and remained a dynamic, assertive presence on disc and in performance. Activity diminished sharply in the 1990s, limited to sporadic appearances. She resurfaced in 2006 with Indestructible!, taped over the preceding two years, before her death that November from pneumonia and advanced Alzheimer's disease.