Posted 3:46 PM by Gene

Here now is the perfect excuse for the news hacks to know not what they're doing. When WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE DYLAN -- dies (assuming he dies; like SUMNER, he is well-nigh IMMORTAL) we will get a state-media funeral, with the pages outlined in black as The Paper of Re-CORD was for LINCOLN, and twenty-four-hour-long docuburps, and enough rotten-egg-smelling platitudes to make WOLF BLITZER and JEFF GREENFIELD sound intelligent -- but here is a woman who merely entertained, and assuming any of the hacks care they're busily scratching their heads and asking, who? We hate to make such a big thing of this, but we know what hacks think, and how hacks write, and what hacks listen to.

This gas expelled, we can say we are familiar with Lady O'Day. We cannot dissociate her with two other jazz giants -- the superdynamic Gene Krupa and Roy Eldridge -- because she arguably sang her best music with them. "Let Me Off Uptown" is too easy -- everyone who knows jazz knows the incendiary interplay between Miss O'Day and Eldridge. "Skylark" is too easy also -- that was the impossible of Anita improving a great tune. But everything she sang had that special zest -- and she was arguably not the best or most melodious of singers, but she had this way of insinuating herself into a tune that made her the best; she could make a song like "That's What You Think" sneak up on you. She had a sly, spry humor too: listen to a mere novelty tune like "Watch the Birdie" or "A Little Bit South of North Carolina", or Frank Loesser's "Murder! He Says". At their best the big-band chanteuses each had an identity, an identity that strengthened the identities of the big bands, and as good as Gene Krupa's was it wasn't half as good without Anita. It's a measure of how revered she was that after her dreadful nervous breakdown she came back with Krupa and her own vocal version of "Opus No. 1", arranged by Sy Oliver, and if it didn't have that nice warm suave velvety O'Day glow to it, and both versions (hers and TD's) were hits, proof of the riches of the big bands. Though we are less familiar with her solo albums we know she never lost that touch. And yes, if she wasn't the nicest of women, and she had many, many drug-induced bad days, she still made the nicest of music.

When jazz died we lost more than a musical form, which explains why we are in constant mourning over our culture, and why news hacks do not know up from down.

Another tribute to Lady O'Day: LEGENDARY DAVIS and the TONE-DEAFS at ROOTKIT MUSIC CO. discontinued both of her Columbia-OKeh anthologies. Well, at least we have them.