Jazz may have been born in New Orleans but it blossomed in Chicago in the first quarter of the 20th Century. The Chicago Anita Belle Colton was born into in 1919 was a melting pot of black and white culture, music and tensions. Her birth year saw the infamous Race Riots in the city, in which violence claimed the lives of 38 Chicagoans and hundreds of families lost everything when their homes were torched. In the Twenties, Chicago’s South Side throbbed with the uptempo sound of jazz. This fusion of African and European music had followed Southern migrants attracted to jobs in the North’s factories and steel mills. Even Louis Armstrong, one of the greatest jazz players of all time, left his home in New Orleans in 1922 for Chicago. Anita had an absent father and was raised largely by her mother. She entered her first marathon dance contest as a teenager. Leaving home at the age of 12 and spending a lot of her time on the road, her teenage years included two abortions. She moved from dancing to singing contests and already showed the beginnings of a drink problem. When she started singing at 19 in late Thirties in nightclubs she took the name O'Day, (pig Latin for ‘dough’, slang for the money she hoped she would make. In the Off-Beat jazz club, a popular haunt for musicians, she met bandleader and drummer Gene Krupa and joined his big band in 1941. Shortly afterwards Krupa hired trumpeter Roy Eldridge, with whom O’Day made a popular duet ‘Let Me Off Uptown’. The same year, Down Beat magazine named her ‘New Star of the Year’ and, in 1942, she was selected as one of its top five big band singers. Her career took off in 1956 with ‘Anita’, first of a series of recordings for producer Norman Granz’s new Verve label. Containing such greats as Cole Porter’s ‘You’re The Top’, ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, ‘A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square’,the perennial favourite ‘Time After Time’ and Gershwin’s ‘Who Cares?’, it won her performances at festivals and concerts with such illustrious musicians as Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk. But it was an appearance in Jazz On A Summer Day, the documentary filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, that made O’Day an international star. Delivering two or three albums a year in the Verve period, she alternated solo albums with collaborations such as 1958’s ‘Anita Sings The Most’, which featured pianist Oscar Peterson. We feature several tracks from this here including ‘Stella By Starlight’ and ‘Love Me Or Leave Me’. 1959 brought ‘Anita O’Day Swings Cole Porter With Billy May’, including such gems as ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ and ‘I've Got You Under My Skin’. A year later, a second joint Billy May compilation was issued ‘swinging’ the songs of Rodgers and Hart – listen here to songs such as ‘Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered’ and ‘Johnny One Note’. 1961 saw ‘Trav’lin’ Light’, O’Day’s tribute to idol Billie Holiday – the title track features here, as well as ‘The Moon Looks Down and Laughs’ and ‘Remember’. Other recording partners included clarinettist and saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre on 1959’s‘Cool Heat’, from which ‘Mack The Knife’ comes, and a Latin mix with Verve labelmate and vibraphone player Cal Tjader on ‘Time For Two’ in 1962, featuring tracks such as ‘Peel Me A Grape’. This was followed in 1963 by a collaborative LP with the Blue Note instrumental jazz trio the Three Sounds. O'Day had a fast articulation, rarely holding a long note (partly due to a botched tonsillectomy in childhood),and a strong knowledge of harmony. She regarded herself as a musician rather than a singer, and excelled at scat singing – vocalisation of notes without words, enabling her to exchange musical ideas with instrumental soloists. She walked close to the shady side that was her early Chicago upbringing for most of her life. The effects of heroin started to be noticeable in her voice by the early Sixties, and although she continued to tour and record while addicted, she nearly died from an overdose in 1969. In 1981 she published her autobiography High Times, Hard Times which talked candidly about her drug addiction. She liked to shock audiences, and, in the days when such things were considered daring, used to introduce drummer John Poole as ‘my room mate’. Seeing herself as a musician rather than a singer, she usually refused to wear glamorous gowns and there were many rows with nightclub owners over the suits she wore on stage. Twice-married Anita re-emerged in 2006 with a new album, ‘Indestructible’, but passed away in November of that year due to the effects of pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. A film Anita O’Day –The Life Of A Jazz Singer was completed only weeks before her death. Arguably the last instantly recognisable jazz diva of a group that included Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, listen here to the best of a singing career that lasted more than 60 years.