CD1
Tracks 1-11: ‘Anita Sings The Most’
1. Medley: ‘S Wonderful/They Can’t Take That
Away From Me
2. Tenderly
3. Old Devil Moon
4. Love Me or Leave Me
5. We’ll Be Together Again
6. Stella By Starlight
7. Taking a Chance on Love
8. Them There Eyes
9. I’ve Got The World on a String
10. You Turned The Tables on Me
11. Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
Tracks 12-23: ‘The Lady Is A Tramp’
12. Rock ‘n’ Roll Blues
13. Love For Sale
14. Lullaby of the Leaves
15. Lover Come Back To Me
16. No Soap, No Hope Blues
17. Speak Low
18. Pagan Love Song
19. Ain’t This A Wonderful Day
20. Somebody’s Crying
21. Vaya Con Dios
22. The Lady is a Tramp
23. Strawberry Moon
CD2
Tracks 1-12: ‘An Evening With Anita O’Day’
1. Just One Of Those Things
2. The Gypsy In My Soul
3. The Man I Love
4. Frankie and Johnny
5. Anita’s Blues
6. I Cover The Waterfront
7. You’re Getting To Be A Habit With Me
8. From This Moment On
9. You Don’t Know What Love Is
10. Medley: There Will Never Be Another You/Just
Friends
11. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
12. Let’s Fall In Love
Tracks 13-24: ‘Anita’
13. You’re The Top
14. Honeysuckle Rose
15. A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
16. Who Cares?
17. I Can’t Get Started
18. Fine And Dandy
19. As Long As I Live
20. No Moon At All
21. Time After Time
22. I’ll See You In My Dreams
23. I Fall In Love Too Easily
24. Beautiful Love
The more I hear Anita O'Day,
the higher she rises in my notional league
table of great female jazz singers. Maybe
she doesn't quite challenge my Top Three of
Fitzgerald, Vaughan and Holiday, but she is
surely not far down the list - perhaps in
the class inhabited by such vocalists as Betty
Carter and Carmen McRae.
Although she started as a
big-band singer (like many of her contemporaries),
she was most often at her best when accompanied
by small groups, as she is on the first of
these four albums originally issued as LPs
in the 1950s (here skilfully compressed onto
two CDs). Recorded in 1957, Anita Sings
the Most gave her as accompanists the
superb Oscar Peterson Trio, with Herb Ellis
on guitar and Ray Brown on bass, plus Anita's
drummer-of-choice, John Poole. Oscar Peterson
was an excellent accompanist for singers,
and his small group gave Anita the space to
improvise and take liberties with songs.
In fact she often takes great
liberties with melodies and lyrics, and the
backing
group works amazingly well to follow
and even anticipate her wildest excursions.
In this sense she was a true jazz vocalist:
inventing on the spot and often at lightning
speed. On the opening medley for example,
she changes key unexpectedly, crosses bar-lines,
and seems in danger of getting lost but somehow
finishes in synch with her accompanists.
The second album, The
Lady is a Tramp, starts with the unsettling
shock of Rock 'n' Roll Blues, blasting
away in an embarrassingly ponderous attempt
to fit the fashion of the time (1952). It
is a surprise to find that the arranger was
Ralph Burns, famous for subtler pieces like
Summer Sequence and Bijou which
he wrote for the Woody Herman band. Of the
dozen songs on this original LP, arranging
duties were equally shared between Ralph Burns,
Roy Kral and Larry Russell, but the arrangements
tend to lack the responsiveness which made
Anita's recordings with Oscar Peterson so
special. An arranged ensemble is more inflexible
than an improvising small group, and it forces
Anita to be less adventurous than with Peterson.
In Lullaby of the Leaves, O'Day wanders
badly off-key but in The Lady is a Tramp
she returns to her former daring.
The second CD brings us back
to accompanying groups which are mainly trios
or quartets, although eight of the twelve
tracks on the album called Anita employed
arrangements by Buddy Bregman which augmented
the jazz quartets with either strings or trombones.
Barney Kessel's guitar enlivens
the first four tracks of this CD, and Anita
proves that she can handle slow songs like
The Man I Love and You Don't Know
What Love Is, with a depth of emotion
reminiscent of Billie Holiday.
So this double album has
its highs and its lows - but many more highs
than lows. And it's another of those incredible
bargains from the Avid label.
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Avid
AMSC 963
