Music Friday: Anita O’Day

Real lives are most interesting to me than anything anyone could ever make up, and that’s why I like documentaries.  (Documentaries, not propaganda)   The Documentary Channel has been running “Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer”.  It was made by her manager a few years before her death.  A good part of it is just her telling stories about her heyday as a jazz singer and unapologetic tales of her heroin use.  Lady is a trip.  Interspersed are performance clips, most famously her performance of “Sweet Georgia Brown” at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.  She considered this the best day of her life and claims she was probably loaded on heroin.

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