I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.~Jay Gould

Anita O'Day

by: hhex65

Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 21:42:18 PM MST

Anita O'Day 1919-2006

Anita O'Day died in her sleep on November 23, 2006. One of the first pieces of music I ever heard was her version of Lady is A Tramp. My parents used to play her records at parties while they thought I was sleeping. Therefore, I wanted to mention her passing.

The complications of alcohol kept making her take years to get her voice back, yet survival was the lifetime achievement of her life. How many people realized in her teens, with her highly stylized honeysuckle hair, that she would be killing nearly so long onstage before she would be received at last? O'Day began in her prime, strolled out of the poor hospital of her birth and started singing.

hhex65 :: Anita O'Day

At age 12, she took one singing lesson and then started recording hits and once she did she was a fixture in all the famous nightspots for years. The life of a female jazz singer in those days shocked her into high times. Once she worked with a broken arm, it was an ordeal and she couldn't walk for days and lost her singing voice. She said she lived to sing and she was indestructible. She got to see New York, she survived romances but ended up with physical debility from her recklessness. She would hide in her home after a drinking binge often emotional and in pain, like the time that her right hand was paralyzed for weeks. She put her stamp on many songs but it came with a price, including 16 stints in jail.

She once said that Georgia Brown and other respected female jazz vocalists always had to suffer because of the behavior of those in charge of the business, which she hated-- but she still tried. The Los Angeles Rose, Anita O'Day, inspired many singers-- name an even dozen and I bet 6/8th of them bear her influence. She always went her own way; and even though it was often almost fatal, she made it to 87.