Only a few months ago, she got
drunk and fell down the steps at the trailer where she
lived outside the city. She used to shrug that
stuff right off, but now that she's 79 years old, it
hits a little harder. She broke her leg this time, and
then got blood poisoning in the hospital. It looked
like she would die or at best be confined to a
wheelchair.
But this is Anita O'Day you're talking about, born
in Chicago in 1919 and the circumnavigator of more
blocks than most in her game.
And here she was, standing up there snapping her
fingers like nothing had happened, her timing as sharp
as the crease in her slacks, singing "There Will
Never Be Another You" in that salty whisper of
hers.
It
took you right back to the days when
she'd wail on "Boogie Blues," with the Gene
Krupa band behind her: "Don't the moon look
lonesome, shinin' through the trees," she'd
sing, a real blues like Jimmy Rushing was doing, no
Doris Day stuff for her. Anita was one of the few
canaries who could even think of swinging like Rushing
did with the Basie band.
On a Tuesday in early July, 1999, at the Atlas
Supper Club, with Marty Harris backing her on piano,
with Jack Le Compte on drums and Jim DeJulio on bass,
she had a top-flight bunch to pick up her every cue,
and cover for her if need be. 
They were with her when she
played the JVC Jazz Festival in late June, a comeback
that brought her a standing ovation and a rather cruel
review in the New York Times.
There proved to be little need to cover for
her this time. "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My
Baby" was another hip choice, an old Louis Jordan
cover that came out swinging hard and clean. True, she
could have used a partner like Roy Eldridge to make it
into the customary duet. "Blow, Roy, blow!"
she used to say when they sang with Krupa. They hated
each other, we now know.
All that is forgotten in the airy, high-ceilinged
room on Wilshire Boulevard, and so are the days when
she and her old man, John Poole,who died in April,
used to prowl Western Avenue nearby looking for a fix.
"Yesterday,"
she sang, reeling off the words to the
Beatles tune as though they couldn't hurt her,
scatting her way out of any trouble with her
intonation. The song became the Jerome Kern standard,
"Yesterdays," which she seemed to understand
even though hers were never exactly sequestered days.
No, she seemed more at home with
"Honeysuckle Rose," about taking sips from
tasty lips.
It too was swift and sarcastic,
perhaps a little gentler than in the old days,
but rousing enough to serve as a finale in the first
of her three brief sets -- sets that brought
three big hands for the little lady.
