ANITA O’DAY ~ PICK YOURSELF UP (1956)!

ANITA O’DAY ~ PICK YOURSELF UP (1956)!

NEXT TO JULIE LONDON, ANITA O’DAY’S VOICE SENDS ME THE MOST. HERE’S ANOTHER GREAT DOWNLOAD FROM KELLY’S LOUNGE SOUNZ . . .

KELLY'S COMMENTARY ~

This is Anita in her prime because her drug use had not yet affected her voice and her creativity was generally still at its height. The Buddy Bregman Orchestra does most of the backing but there are also a few tracks on which she is joined by a jazz combo.

Now and then I read a review that stands out from some of the others. This is one of them. While it might be short on details, it's long on ideas and being a "cat" person it appealed to me. It's written by Sam Chell.

"I have a cat who runs out to greet me every night, then insists on walking me around the block (more than one neighbor has done a double take after discovering Emmy is not a dog). At bedtime she waits 'til the light's out then shoos my other two cats out of the bed before depositing herself opposite my face exactly an arm's length away. If I try to lessen the space, her paw is immediately on my nose maintaining the crucial distance that marks her difference from her human counterparts.

For anyone who's allergic to cats Anita O'Day has to be the closest surrogate -- more companionable than Andrew Lloyd Weber's version, yet more detached than Peggy Lee's (thinking of her dubbed voice on Lady and the Tramp). In fact, like Peggy Lee – not to mention Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Ella, Sarah – Anita is very much a product of the swing era and the big bands perhaps epitomizing its hot sounds more effectively than any other female singer, most notably on her recorded duet with Roy Eldridge, Let Me Off Up Town.

But the difference between this survivor and her peers is the unmistakable ethos of "cool" that insures you and Anita will always remain strangers to each other. She purrs Stars Fall on Alabama and embraces you with buttery vibrations on Young Man a Horn, yet she remains as autonomous and inscrutable as the Sweet Georgia Brown who appears no less dangerous than Circe or Medusa in Anita's singular portrayal of her (she does so visually in the remarkable film documentary, Jazz on a Summer's Day). And when Anita sings I Won't Dance, you'd better believe it -- don't ask her!"

TRACKS:

01) Don't Be That Way
02) Let's Face The Music And Dance
03) I Never Had A Chance
04) Stompin At The Savoy
05) Pick Yourself Up
06) Stars Fell On Alabama
07) Sweet Georgia Brown
08) I Won't Dance
09) Man With A Horn
10) I Used To Be Color Blind
11) There's A Lull In My Life
12) Let's Begin

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