Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
DVD Revisits Career of Recently-Deceased Jazz Great - Blue eyed soul at its very best!
Anita
O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
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Amazon
Studio: Elan Entertainment/Red Distribution
DVD Extras: 90 minutes of interviews and uninterrupted bonus
performances.
Actors: Anita O’Day
Directors: Robbie Cavolina; Ian McCrudden
Format: Best of, Color, DVD, NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of discs: 2
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: RED Distribution DVD
DVD Release Date: July 21, 2009
Run Time: 120 minutes
DVD Review by Kam Williams
Excellent (4 stars)
Born in a broken home in Chicago in 1919, Anita
Belle Colton had such a rough childhood that she ran away from
home in her early teens. Initially, she supported herself by
entering contests on the dance marathon circuit which was the
rage all across the country during the 1930s. When she tired of
this line of work, she started singing professionally at the
tender age of 16.
Blessed with a velvety voice which might be best described as a
cross of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, she changed her
name to Anita O’Day by the time she began touring with big bands
led by Gene Krupa amd Stan Kenton. But she really only came into
her own upon the demise of the Swing Era, which is when she
started leading her own bebop combos.
O’Day truly flourished in the 1950s, and was the first vocalist
signed by Verve Records. She probably peaked professionally at
the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival where her legendary performance
eclipsed those of many of her contemporaries with household
names. Unfortunately, the reason why Anita’s never became as
well known had to do with her wreck of a personal life, a
miserable existence marked by a 20-year addiction to heroin and
alcohol, rape, a couple of failed marriages, and stints behind
bars for drug possession.
All of the above is chronicled in Anita O’Day: The Life of a
Jazz Singer, a warts-and-all bio-pic directed by Robbie Cavolina
and Ian McCrudden. The film features concert and offstage
footage of O’Day from as far back as the 1940s all the way up to
shortly before her death due to complications from pneumonia in
2006.
What is most remarkable about the very accessible subject of
this appealing documentary is how resilient she proved to be in
the face of neverending adversity. She survived even as
narcotics and booze were consuming the futures of so many of her
equally-strung out colleagues in the industry, guys like Charlie
Bird Parker, her young arranger Gary McFarland, and later her
drummer, John Poole, the man who first introduced her to
mainlining smack.
Nonetheless, this music-oriented treat is made memorable by the
phenomenal musical interludes of O’Day doing what made her
famous forever, those moments of sheer genius when she
reinterprets assorted jazz standards, making them her own by
employing an engaging mix of mood, tone, phrasing, scatting and
raw emotion. Blue eyed soul at its very best!