Search - Anita O'Day :: Lady Is a Tramp

Anita O Day singing jazz, "Rock 'N' Roll Blues" and... "Vaya

Nikica Gilic | Zagreb, Croatia | 04/09/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"OK; the title of my comment tells quite a lot about this strange album;

maybe it was not such a smart move to listen to it immediately after listening to "Anita sings the most" (with Oscar Peterson)...



First 4 tracks have a nice supporting crew starring Roy Eldridge, but the arranger and pianist Ralph Burns manages to make it mostly soulless and the person who gave Anita and the band the sheets for "Rock 'N' Roll Blues" made the favour to no one.



The rest of the album is equally chaotic; all in all three different arrangers and at least four different line-ups give a nice intro to the art of wasting one of the greater talents in vocal jazz, with only few highlights and hardly a single perfomance completely worthy of Anita O'Day (among possible exceptions is "Lady is a Tramp" with Roy Kral on piano)...

Completely straight-forward rendition of "Vaya con Dios" is the low point; at "Rock'N'Roll Blues" Anita made at least one bar of jazz singing, with Roy Eldridge blowing at least one additional jazz break...

Weeell, I guess this is historically interesting for Anita's fans."