Anita O'Day

Anita O'Day

Born Anita Belle Colton in 1919 in Chicago, she was raised largely by her mother, and entered her first marathon-dance contest while barely a teenager. She soon started singing earned a place in Gene Krupa's band in 1941 but the band broke up in 1943. She then performed and recorded with Stan Kenton. And had her solo debut in 1946. Her first album (and the first LP ever released by Verve) was “Anita” in 1955. She performed in jazz festivals throughout the 1950s and was a worldwide hit. O'Day's series of almost twenty Verve LPs during the '50s and '60s proved her to be one of the most distinctive, trend-setting, and successful vocal artists of the time. She worked with a variety of arrangers and in many different settings but by the early '60s, her ebullient voice had begun sounding tired. This was the cumulative effects of heroin addiction, its resulting lifestyle, and a non-stop concert schedule forced her into a physical collapse by 1967. After taking several years to kick alcohol and drug addictions, she made a comeback at the 1970 Berlin Jazz Festival and returned in the early '70s with a flood of live and studio albums, many recorded in Japan and some released on her own label, Emily Records. Her autobiography, 1981's High Times, Hard Times was typically honest and direct regarding her colorful past. Though her voice gradually deteriorated, O'Day recorded throughout the 1970s and '80s, into the '90s remaining an exciting, forceful vocalist on record as well as in concert. She died on November 23, 2006. Her death was after the creation of Tapestry in Blue, part of “Blues Chapel”.