Her spirit could make the whole world swing. She knocked out every song with a rhythmic sensibility that turned cool over and over again. She led, and followed, and swung in step with the band and the best of all of those bands too. Her’s was a career of trials and gains, highs and lows. The jazz world, like the world in general, challenged female performers. She was defiant in the fight and that defiance seemed a fierce fuel for her artistry.
Addiction to heroin challenged her too but she overcame it, even to write about it in her own story, High Times, Low Times. A story of a storied life. O’Day. She could truly put a hug around a ballad with her voice. Of, and in, her day she may well have been like the ‘take no prisoner’ energy of today’s Natasha Lyonne. It was all about a toughness, with a charm as real and as brilliantly bright and right as the beat.
No veneered persona, O’Day gave it all, and her all was the real thing.