Anita O'Day

Template:Short description Template:Wikidata image Anita Belle Colton (October 18, 1919 – November 23, 2006), known professionally as Anita O'Day, was an American jazz singer and self-proclaimed “song stylist” widely admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances that shattered the traditional image of the "girl singer". Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a "hip" jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O'Day, pig Latin for "dough", slang for money.

Early life

Anita Belle Colton was born on October 18, 1919 to James and Gladys (née Gill) Colton in Kansas City, Missouri, both of whom were of Irish ancestry. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois shortly after her birth. After relocating, her parents divorced and Colton was left in the care of her mother. In her autobiography, she described her mother as being emotionally distant. "I didn't realize at the time, of course, but she made me feel like I was keeping her from living her life," Colton remembered. Each summer, Colton was also sent to her paternal grandparents in Kansas City where she learned about religion and also took interest in singing. At age seven, her parents remarried and moved into a larger Chicago apartment that her father won on a round of poker. He also obtained a piano and the family learned to sing harmony together. Her father obtained a job as a printer, but spent most of his paycheck on alcohol, leading to her parents divorcing for the final time. Mrs. Colton sold the piano and moved with her daughter into a one-room Chicago apartment.Template:Sfn

At school, Colton recalled having difficulties learning to read and was not interested in studying. After being told by a guidance counselor she would only be able to pass one subject, Colton hitchhiked to her grandparents' home in Kansas City. An uncle soon sent her back to Chicago where she returned to living with her mother and her mother's sister (who recently lost all of her finances).Template:Sfn At age 14, Colton convinced her mother to leave school in order to become a contestant in the popular walkathons as a dancer. It was as a contestant that she changed her last name from Colton to "O'Day", which was Pig Latin for "dough" (in reference to the "dough" she hoped to make in the contests).Template:Sfn

O'Day won first place in a Lindy Hop walkathon dance show, second place in an amateur show called "Dynamite Sprint" and second place in a walkathon that covered 4,000 miles over 97 days. In another contest, she was put into a mock wedding which ended abruptly after its promoter ran off. Instead, O'Day and her fellow contests raffled off a baby pig.Template:Sfn She toured with the walk-a-thons circuits for two years, occasionally entering to specialized singing contests, including winning two Silver Dollars for performing "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?".Template:Sfn A truancy officer soon discovered that O'Day was not attending school and sent her back to Chicago when she was 15 but she soon dropped out of school permanently at age 16.Template:Sfn

Career

1936–1946: Early singing and commercial success as a big band vocalist

Following leaving school altogether in 1936, O'Day became determined to become a professional singer, beginning as a chorus girl in such uptown venues as the Celebrity Club and the Vanity Fair. She then found work as a singer and waitress at clubs like the Ball of Fire, the Vialago, and the Planet Mars. After marrying drummer, Don Carter, DownBeat editor Carl Cons hired her in 1938 to work at his new club in Chicago's state street neighborhood called the Off-Beat. Also performing at the Off-Beat was the Max Miller Quartet, which backed O'Day for the first ten days of her stay there. In 1939, O'Day was hired as vocalist for Miller's Quartet, which had a stay at the Three Deuces club in Chicago. She also auditioned as a lead vocalist for Benny Goodman's orchestra, but lost to Helen Forrest. She briefly worked as the lead singer for Raymond Scott's band but was fired after forgetting the lyrics onstage.Template:Sfn

While performing at the Off-Beat, she met Gene Krupa, who promised to call her if his current vocalist (Irene Daye) ever left his band. In 1941, Krupa's manager informed her that Daye was leaving the band to get marriedTemplate:Sfn and O'Day joined his orchestra that year. Between March and May 1941, O'Day made 12 recordings in New York City with Krupa and his orchestra.Template:Sfn From the recordings came the single, "Georgia on My Mind", which made the top 20 of the US pop chart. It was followed by the US top-10 entry, "Just a Little Bit South of North Carolina". Krupa then hired black trumpeter, Roy Eldridge. His hire signified one of the first examples of racial integration in American popular music. According to O'Day, Eldridge disliked her for consistently "upstaging him" by dancing to his trumpet solos during performances.Template:Sfn Nonetheless, Eldridge and O'Day found commercial success with 1941's "Let Me off Uptown", which rose to number ten on the US pop chart. With O'Day's commercial success, she was named DownBeat magazine's New Star of the Year and two of her Krupa hits were turned into soundies that played in American cinemas: "Let Me off Uptown" and "Thanks for the Boogie Ride". Because the Krupa band was in-demand, O'Day traveled with his group consistently throughout 1941 and 1942, including a series of one-night engagements. While Krupa received top pay, O'Day only received $7.50 per week as the band singer, which afforded her just enough to live on while touring.Template:Sfn O'Day recorded nearly 20 more selections with Krupa's orchestra through 1942, including a cover of the standard, "Skylark".Template:Sfn However, none of these recordings became US hits for the band. In 1943, O'Day received approval to take time off to marry her second husband, Carl Hoff. After agreeing to appear temporarily with the band at the Chicago's Hotel Sherman,Template:Sfn Krupa was arrested for marijuana possession and the band broke up in 1943. O'Day proceeded to join Woody Herman for a month-long gig at the Hollywood Palladium, followed by two weeks at the Orpheum. Unwilling to tour with another big band, she left Herman after the Orpheum engagement and finished out the year as a solo artist.

In April 1944, O'Day's manager convinced her to join Stan Kenton's big band despite her belief that his group did not have the characteristics of a swing group.Template:Sfn One month later, she recorded three sides with Kenton in Los Angeles, including the tune "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine".Template:Sfn It became a million-selling single, rising to number four on the US pop chart in 1944. She spent 11 months with Kenton's orchestra, recorded 21 sides (both transcription and commercial) and appeared in a Universal Pictures short titled Artistry in Rhythm (1944). O'Day also appeared in one soundie with Kenton, performing "I'm Going Mad for a Pad" and "Tabby the Cat". O'Day later said "My time with Stanley helped nurture and cultivate my innate sense of chord structure." She departed the band in 1945 after finding a replacement in Chicago identical to her in sound named Shirley Luster (she later changed her name to June Christy). Krupa's new manager then convinced O'Day to rejoin his band,Template:Sfn which resulted in ten sides recorded between August and October 1945 in New York City.Template:Sfn Two of her recordings with the band became top-10 hits on the US pop chart between 1945 and 1946: "Chickery Chick" and "Boogie Blues". In 1945, O'Day was named Top Girl Band Vocalist by DownBeat and Outstanding New Star by Esquire. While on-tour with Krupa, O'Day became physically drained from her busy work schedule and eventually had to quit the band after suffering from a panic attack.Template:Sfn

Post-war work and drug arrests

In late 1946, O'Day again became a solo artist, signing a recording contract with Bob Thiele's Signature label in 1947. At the label, she cut a new style of jazz called bebop, some of which were issued as a singles like "Ace in the Hole", "What Is This Thing Called Love?", "How High the Moon" and "I Ain't Gettin' Any Younger". Also during this period, O'Day and her second husband attempted to open a supper club but were instead arrested for marijuana possession.

File:Anita O'Day 1957.jpg

Anita O'Day performing at the Storyville Jazz Club in Boston in July, 1957. Photo: Mel Levine

During the late 1940s, O'Day was trying to achieve popular success without sacrificing her identity as a jazz singer. During this period she recorded two dozen sides, mostly for small labels. Among the more notable recordings from this time are "Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip", "Key Largo", "How High the Moon", "I Told Ya I Love Ya, Now Get Out", and "Malaguena". After a jail stint, she performed with Woody Herman's Herd and the Stan Kenton Artistry In Rhythm Orchestra. Her career was back on the upswing in September 1948 when she sang with Count Basie at the Royal Roost in New York City, resulting in five airchecks. What secured O'Day's place in the jazz pantheon, however, were the 17 albums she recorded for Norman Granz's Norgran and Verve labels between 1952 and 1962.

Her first album, Anita O'Day Sings Jazz (reissued as The Lady Is a Tramp), was recorded in 1952 for the newly established Norgran Records (it was also the label's first LP). The album was a critical success and boosted her popularity. Soon after her release from jail on February 25, 1954, she began work on her second album, Songs by Anita O'Day (reissued as An Evening with Anita O'Day). She recorded steadily throughout the 1950s, accompanied by small combos and big bands. In person, O'Day generally was backed by a trio that included John Poole, the drummer with whom she would work for the next 40 years.

As a live performer, O'Day began performing in festivals and concerts with musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dinah Washington, George Shearing, Cal Tjader and Thelonious Monk. She appeared in the documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day, filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, which increased her popularity. She admitted later that she was probably high on heroin during the concert.

The following year, O'Day made a cameo appearance in The Gene Krupa Story, singing "Memories of You". Late in 1959, she toured Europe with Benny Goodman to great personal acclaim. O'Day wrote in her 1981 autobiography that when Goodman's attempts to upstage her failed to diminish the audience's enthusiasm, he cut all but two of her numbers from the show.

O'Day went back to touring as a solo artist and appeared on such TV specials as the Timex All-Star Jazz Show and The Swingin' Years hosted by Ronald Reagan. She recorded infrequently after the expiration of her Verve contract in 1962, and her career seemed over when she nearly died of a heroin overdose in 1968. During this time, her working trio included Chicagoan George Finley on drums, father of performance artist Karen Finley. After kicking the habit, she made a comeback at the 1970 Berlin Jazz Festival. She also appeared in the films Zig Zag a.k.a. False Witness with George Kennedy (1970) and The Outfit (1974) with Robert Duvall. She resumed making live and studio albums under the new management of Alan Eichler, many recorded in Japan, and several were released on Emily Records, owned by Anita O'Day and John Poole.

Memoir and later life

File:Anita O'Day (cropped).jpg

O'Day in 2005.

In November 1980, she was a headliner along with Clark Terry, Lionel Hampton and Ramsey Lewis, during the opening two-week ceremony performances celebrating the short-lived resurgence of the Blue Note Lounge at the Marriott O'Hare Hotel near Chicago. O'Day spoke candidly about her drug addiction in her 1981 memoir High Times, Hard Times, which led to a string of TV appearances on 60 Minutes, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Today Show with Bryant Gumbel, The Dick Cavett Show, Over Easy with Hugh Downs, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, and several others. She toured Europe and performed a 50th Anniversary Concert (1985) at Carnegie Hall, which resulted in the 2010 release of Anita O'Day – Big Band at Carnegie Hall (Emily Productions).

Following a life-threatening fall down a staircase at the end of 1996, she made a comeback in 1999, resuming her career with the help of long-time manager Alan Eichler. In 2005, her version of the standard "Sing, Sing, Sing" was remixed by RSL and was included in the compilation album Verve Remixed 3. The following year, she released Indestructible!, her first album in 13 years and her last studio album. During this period pianist John Colianni was her accompanist for numerous club appearances and special gigs (Colianni also plays on Indestructible!).

One of her better known late-career audio performances is "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby", which opens the film Shortbus (2006) by John Cameron Mitchell.

In November 2006, Robbie Cavolina (her last manager) entered her into a West Hollywood convalescent hospital while she recovered from pneumonia. Two days before her death, she had demanded to be released from the hospital. On November 23, 2006, at age 87, O'Day died in her sleep. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest.

The feature-length documentary Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, directed by Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 30, 2007.

Drug arrests

While living with husband Carl Hoff in Los Angeles in March 1947, two undercover policemen came to their home, during a party at which Dizzy Gillespie was playing from the branches of a tree in their front yard. They found a small bag of marijuana, for which Anita and Carl were arrested. On August 11, Judge Harold B. Landreth found them guilty, and handed down 90-day sentences. In February 1953, she was in court again for another marijuana charge, this time for smoking a joint while riding in a car. The case was dismissed by a jury for lack of evidence, but while awaiting her trial, O'Day was introduced to sniffing heroin by Harry the Hipster. She had switched from marijuana to alcohol after her second arrest, and her first thought on feeling the effects of heroin was, "Oh good, now I don't have to drink." Within a month, she allegedly was framed on a heroin charge and was facing six years in prison.

Style

O'Day cited Martha Raye as the primary influence on her vocal style, also expressing admiration for Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. She always maintained that the accidental excision of her uvula during a childhood tonsillectomy left her incapable of vibrato, and unable to maintain long phrases. That botched operation, she claimed, forced her to develop a more percussive style based on short notes and rhythmic drive. However, when she was in good voice she could stretch long notes with strong crescendos and a telescoping vibrato, e.g. her live version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, captured in Bert Stern's film Jazz on a Summer's Day.

Filmography

Features

• The Gene Krupa Story (1959) – Herself
• Zig Zag (1970) – Sheila Mangan
• The Outfit (1973) – Herself

Documentaries

• Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959)
• Anita O'Day – Live at Ronnie Scott's (2006)
• Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2007)
• Live in Tokyo '63 (2007)
• Jazz Icons (2009)

External links

• Anita O'Day at Jazz Profiles
• Template:PAGENAMEBASE at AllMusic
• Template:PAGENAMEBASE discography at Discogs
• Template:Trim/ Template:PAGENAMEBASE at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidata