A Talented and Tormented Singer Is Finally Brought to Book

‘Cool Heat: Anita O’Day and Her Dangerous Jazz Life’By James GavinEquinox Books, 240 pagesTo borrow a phrase from the late Joan Rivers, Anita O’Day was a real “piece of work.” Foremostly, she was one of the great jazz singers of all time. In terms of speed, precision, and the sheer excitement that she generated, she was perhaps second only to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. She was one of the few musicians on any instrument to even try to outrun and outswing the formidable Oscar Peterson — and actually do a credible job of it. At the same time, any personal interaction with Anita was inevitably a bumpy ride, to put it mildly. She was inevitably not only petulant but even perverse. I remember how in the middle of a dinner with her and her longtime, and, truly long-suffering, manager Alan Eichler, she made a point to let everyone in the house know that she had never read her own autobiography. In the 25 years or so that I knew her, she always seemed to be heading towards a temper tantrum, or worse, was already in the middle of one.I’ve written about Anita extensively, as befits an artist of her undeniable stature, but the task of reconciling both sides of this incredibly complex personality is not something I would have the nerve to attempt. Thankfully, James Gavin, who has been writing about Anita for even longer and knew her even better than I did, has done us all a major service.“Cool Heat: Anita O’Day and Her Dangerous Jazz Life,” just published in England by Equinox, is the first full-length book on the singer other than her own memoir, “High Times Hard Times” (1981), co-written with George Eells. It’s also Mr. Gavin’s fifth biography of a major musical figure, following Chet Baker, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, and George Michael. O’Day fully deserves the attention, and fortunately, gave us an artistic catalog strong enough to withstand such scrutiny. Born Anita Colton in Chicago in the immediate aftermath of World War I, she was, by the time of World War II, one of the most outstanding singers in the whole big band ecosystem, already on a par with Lee, Sinatra, Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday.Like those peers, she graduated from swing era chirp to postwar headliner. Perhaps even more than Fitzgerald, she came to be the vocalist who best personified the bebop aesthetic, both on and off the bandstand, in a tumultuous personal life that was somehow both self-destructive and self-perpetuating.O’Day managed to give us two distinct bodies of work: her tracks as band vocalist with drum superstar Gene Krupa and then pianist and progressive jazz avatar Stan Kenton, are an amazingly complete canon by themselves. Then, a decade, she reappears as a solo recording artist working with producer Norman Granz, the entrepreneur behind Verve Records, leading to an even more productive period in which she created ten records worth of brilliant material, an amazing catalog in which nearly every track is a classic of improvisation and sheer chutzpah. In 1959, she also became the attractive face of the Newport Jazz Festival, due to a career-boosting appearance in the pioneering concert film “Jazz on a Summer’s Day.” Mr. Gavin not only accesses O’Day’s often-magnificent output, but doesn’t spare us the details of her various addictions and her toxic relationships with men like her second husband Carl Hoff, her drummer and longtime musical partner John Poole, and Mr. Eichler, who all went to heroic lengths to empower her to do her best work while, at the same time, trying, often in vain, to keep her out of trouble. Mr. Gavin also deals with her own book: “Though he had caught her carefree tone, little of the prose had come out of her mouth; Eells had rewritten her comments heavily.” I can personally vouch for the first part of that assessment. Fortunately, Mr. Gavin had access to Eells’s notes and papers. The Anita he gives us is more feisty and perhaps less sympathetic than the Anita of her own (and Eells’) account.Alan Eichler once told me, well before her death in 2006, that the reason Anita never read her own book was that there was so much sadness in her life that she didn’t want to revisit. Indeed, she had a softer side; I don’t think I would ever describe her as sentimental or much less romantic, but she was a much greater ballad singer than she was willing to admit. From her 1941 recording of “Skylark” (one of the first) to her 1960 “Little Girl Blue” to her 1975 “A Song for You,” Anita could not only swing forthrightly but break your heart with the right material.Mr. Gavin is to be commended for embracing all the aspects of O’Day’s legacy with the same unflinching ardor and enthusiasm that O’Day herself brought to the jazz life, the good, the bad, and the not-so-pretty. Perhaps not the least of the side benefits of reading this fast-paced, well-balanced account is that it motivated me to re-listen to the whole O’Day output once again. For that in itself, I am grateful.

A Talented and Tormented Singer Is Finally Brought to Book

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