Anita O'Day: The Life of A Jazz Singer 2008

Before her death in November 2006 at age 86, Anita O'Day, one of jazz's most complex and rhythmic vocalists, smiled on the music world for six decades. This film portrait captures all the magic that took this sly Chicago native, a white girl who could hold her own against Billie and Ella, from Gene Krupa's bandstand to solo stardom. Film footage of Anita O'Day's appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, immortalized in the 1960 documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day and excerpted here, may be the defining moment of the post-bebop era.