Anita O'Day : Newport 1958

The iconic image of Anita O'Day is from “Jazz on a Summer's Day," shot at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, where she showed up for her afternoon set in heels, an audacious bonnet and a slinky black dress, treating the crowd (some of whom looked somnambulistic) to a white-hot “Sweet Georgia Brown." O'Day was high as a kite - probably, she says, in one of the many interviews that punctuate “The Life of a Jazz Singer." Despite her substance abuse, there was an incredible strength to O'Day, who refused to compromise her art (while never calling it such) and lived a jazz life at a time when women didn't. (read more...)