Anita O'Day: Live at Ronnie Scott's London

At the age of 66 when this March 1986 performance was recorded at Ronnie Scott's—the venerable London jazz club—singer Anita O'Day was well past her prime (a circumstance deriving not only from age but also accumulated years of substance abuse and hard living). Yet O'Day was still perhaps the hippest female jazz vocalist on the scene, armed with a smoky alto (absent of vibrato, reportedly the result of a childhood tonsillectomy gone wrong), an unerring sense of swing, and—even without the bravura technique of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan—an excellent ability to both scat and improvise. Those qualities are on display throughout this set, which finds O'Day accompanied by a veteran quintet that includes drummer John Poole, her musical partner for several decades. The repertoire contains no surprises, leaning heavily on standards by Gershwin (including "'S Wonderful" and "They Can't Take That Away From Me"), Duke Ellington ("It Don't Mean a Thing"), Antonio Carlos Jobim ("Wave"), and Cole Porter ("You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To"). But the relaxed, personable O'Day doesn't do any of them straight, fluidly mixing melody and improvisation with a jazz player's sensibility. On tunes like "I Can't Get Started" and "On Green Dolphin Street," she adds the opening verses that have long since been discarded by most singers; on "You'd Be So Nice…" she scat sings effortlessly as she trades fours, then twos, then ones with the musicians; and she takes Louis Jordan's "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" as a slinky walking blues. The set's a bit on the short side, but Anita O'Day: Live at Ronnie Scott's is a nice record of this late, great singer (O'Day died in 2006). Recommended, overall. Aud: C, P. (S. Graham)