Few female jazz singers matched the hard-swinging and equally hard-living Anita O'Day for sheer exuberance and talent in all areas of jazz vocals. Her improvising, wide dynamic tone, and innate sense of rhythm made her more than just another big-band canary. At a time when most female vocals tended to emphasize the sweet timbres of their voice, she chose to emphasize a path blazed by the one major jazz singer who emphasized message over medium - Billie Holiday. Like Holiday, O'Day combined the soaring freedom of jazz instrumentalist with the storytelling lyricism of a poet.
After making her solo debut in the mid-'40s she incorporated bop modernism into her vocals and recorded over a dozen of the best vocal LPs of the era.
During the late Forties, she recorded two dozen sides, mostly for small labels. The quality of these singles varies: O'Day was trying to achieve popular success without sacrificing her identity as a jazz singer. Among the more notable recordings from this period are "Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip", "Key Largo", "How High the Moon", and "Malaguena". O'Day's drug problems began to surface late in 1947, when she and husband Carl Hoff were arrested for possession of marijuana and sentenced to 90 days in jail. Her career was back on the upswing in September of 1948, when she sang with Count Basie at the Royal Roost in New York City, resulting in five airchecks. What secured O'Day's place in the jazz pantheon, however, are the seventeen albums she recorded for Verve between 1956 and 1962.
Her first album, Anita O'Day Sings Jazz (reissued as The Lady Is a Tramp), was recorded in 1956 for the newly established Verve Records (it was also the label's first LP). The album was a critical success and further boosted her popularity. In October of 1952 O'Day was again arrested for possession of marijuana, but found not guilty. The following March, she was arrested for possession of heroin. The case dragged on for most of 1953; O'Day was finally sentenced to six months in jail. Not long after her release from jail on February 25, 1954, she began work on her second album, Songs by Anita O'Day (reissued as An Evening with Anita O'Day). She recorded steadily throughout the Fifties, accompanied by small combos and big bands. In person, O'Day was generally backed by a trio which included the drummer with whom she would work for the next 40 years, John Poole.
As a live performer O'Day also began performing in festivals and concerts with such musicians as Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dinah Washington, George Shearing, Cal Tjader, and Thelonious Monk. She appeared in the documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day, filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival which increased her popularity. The following year O'Day made a cameo appearance in The Gene Krupa Story , singing "Memories of You". Late in 1959 she toured Europe with Benny Goodman; according to her autobiography, when Goodman's attempts to upstage her failed to diminish the audience's enthusiasm, he cut all but two of her numbers from the show.
After the Goodman fiasco, O'Day went back to touring as a solo artist. She recorded infrequently after the expiration of her Verve contract in 1962 and her career seemed over when she nearly died of a heroin overdose in 1968. After kicking the habit, she made a comeback at the 1970 Berlin Jazz Festival. She also appeared in the films Zig Zag (1970) and The Outfit (1974). She resumed making live and studio albums, many recorded in Japan, and several were released on her own label, Emily Records.
O'Day spoke candidly about her drug addiction in her 1981 memoir, High Times, Hard Times.
Her version of the standard, "Sing, Sing, Sing" was remixed by RSL and was included in the compilation album Verve Remixed 3 in 2005.
2006 saw her first album release in 13 years, entitled Indestructible!.
I Used to Be Colorblind
Anita O'Day Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
How a dreary world can suddenly change
To a world as bright as the evening star
Queer
What a difference when your vision is clear
And you see things as they really are
I used to be color-blind
There's green in the grass
There's gold in the moon
There's blue in the skies
That semi-circle that was always hanging about
Is not a storm cloud, it's a rainbow
And you brought the colors out
Believe me it's really true
Till I met you I never knew
A setting sun could paint such beautiful skies
I never knew there were such lovely colors
And the big surprise
Is the red in your cheeks
The gold in your hair
The blue in your eyes
The song I Used to Be Colorblind by Anita O'Day is a beautiful love song that speaks of the transformative power of love. The opening lines talk about how the world can suddenly change from being dreary to being bright as the evening star when one is in love. The lyrics convey a sense of wonder and amazement at the beauty that love can bring to the world. The song talks about the difference that clear vision can make in life, and how love helps to bring clarity and color to a once color-blind person's world.
The key message of the song is that love has the power to change a person's perspective on life. Before meeting the person they are singing about, the singer was color-blind and unable to see the beauty in the world around them. However, meeting this person has opened their eyes to the beauty of nature, and they now see colors they never even knew existed. The line "And you brought the colors out" is particularly powerful, as it suggests that love has the power to reveal things to us that we never even knew were there.
Overall, I Used to Be Colorblind is a poignant song that speaks to the transformative power of love. By using imagery related to color, the song conveys a sense of wonder and amazement at the world around us, and suggests that love has the power to help us see the world in a completely new light.
Line by Line Meaning
Strange
Isn't it strange how the world can go from dull to vibrant?
How a dreary world can suddenly change
It's amazing how a monotonous world can alter instantly
To a world as bright as the evening star
To transform to a world as illuminated as the night star
Queer
It's queer how life can be once you're able to see things in clarity
What a difference when your vision is clear
What a vast difference it makes when everything becomes clear
And you see things as they really are
And when you can view things as they actually are
I used to be color-blind
There was a time when I could not differentiate between colors
But I met you and now I find
But since I met you, it's now different
There's green in the grass
I now see the presence of green in the grass
There's gold in the moon
I now perceive that the moon is presented in gold
There's blue in the skies
I now recognize that the skies are indeed in blue
That semi-circle that was always hanging about
That semi-circle that perpetually floated around
Is not a storm cloud, it's a rainbow
It's not a storm cloud but, in reality, it's a rainbow
And you brought the colors out
And it's all because you helped me distinguish these colors
Believe me it's really true
Believe me or not, it's the truth
Till I met you I never knew
Before encountering you, I was not aware
A setting sun could paint such beautiful skies
How a setting sun can make such picturesque views
I never knew there were such lovely colors
Previously, I never acknowledged the existence of such exquisite colors
And the big surprise
And the greatest surprise is
Is the red in your cheeks
Is the red blush on your cheeks
The gold in your hair
The lustrousness presented in your hair
The blue in your eyes
And the essence of blue in your eyes
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: IRVING BERLIN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Aceiseverywhere
on Who Cares?
Let it rain and thunder
Let a million firms go under
I am not concerned with, stocks and bombs that I've been burned with
I love you and you love me
And that's how it will always be
And nothing else can ever mean a thing
Who cares what the public chatters?
Love's the only thing that matters
Who cares if the sky, cares to fall
in the sea
Who cares how history rates me?
As long as your kiss intoxicates me
Oh why should I care?
Life is one long jubilee
As long as I care for you
And you care for me!
Who cares if the sky, cares to fall
in the sea
Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers?
As long as you've got a kiss that conquers!
Oh why should I care?
Life is one long jubilee
So long as I care for you
and you care for me!
(These lyrics might be wrong, sorry)