“Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. And start all over again.” This was one of my stepfather’s records and I pulled it out of his small collection when I was about 14 (maybe the cover piqued my pubescent interest).   Anita O’Day remains maybe my favorite female jazz vocalist. When I first moved to New York, I hitchhiked to see her at a small club in New Jersey and sat and spoke with her for about an hour.

Cover photo by the great Herman Leonard. Buddy Bregman arranges and conducts.

Anita O’Day, the last surviving member of the pantheon of great jazz singers (whose ranks also include Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughan), passed away Thanksgiving morning at the age of 87. Born in Chicago, O’Day gained national attention as the girl singer with drummer Gene Krupa’s orchestra on the hit record “Let Me Off Uptown.” After two tenures with Krupa and one, inbetween, with Stan Kenton and his Orchestra, O’Day became a solo star and, along with Fitzgerald and Vaughan, a founding fore-mother ofmodern jazz vocals. Known for her inventive scatting as well as her touching balladeering, O’Day recorded several dozen classic albums, mostly for the Verve label in the 1950s. Ms. O’Day was often as flamboyant visually as she was innovative vocally, evidence of which can be found in the films “The Gene Krupa Story” and “Jazz On A Summer’s Day. A survivor of both heroin and alcohol addiction, she was also the author of one of the great jazz memoirs, “Hard Times, High Times” and the subject of a full-length documentary film, ‘Anita O’Day – The Life of A Jazz Singer’ which is currently in the final stages of completion. –Will Friedwald November 23, 2006

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