Anita O’Day – Sweet Georgia Brown (1958)

Anita O’Day is one of the more understated vocal jazz artists of our time, but is certainly one of my favourites.

I like her style: that hip demeanor and fantastic voice, the way she breathes life into her songs. With her charisma, it’s not hard to fall in love with Anita O’Day’s magic. It’s not only her music that has inspired me, but her life as well. She went through so much during her career, and it’s incredible how she stood up to the hardships all these years.

From the site:

[Anita O'Day] is one of the few white female jazz vocalists who ever rose to the pantheon of greatness in a field dominated by Ellas, Carmens, Billies and Sarahs. Onstage, she could swing without peers of any age, color or gender. But privately, she was a walking catastrophe. She survived four failed marriages, arrest, jail time, alcoholism, rape, abortions and 15 years of heroin addiction. For seven decades, she recorded and toured relentlessly, showcasing an exquisite, smoky style that was tonally pure, rhythmically precise, and suffused with dazzling bebop pyrotechnics. Vintage clips from her long career, including jaw-dropping performances from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in which she commands both the band and the audience with a feisty authority not often seen in women of her day, prove it.

…Her refusal to wallow in her misfortunes or play the victim is refreshing, but it’s a life that will make you slack-jawed. The music…will stop your heart; the facts of her criminal life will break it.

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Here’s a clip from 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, with Anita O’Day singing Sweet Georgia Brown: