For a few moments on Sunday afternoon, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts suddenly changed into a swanky, World War II-era Chicago jazz club. Shortly after 3 p.m., a slender woman in a black dress and wide-brimmed hat shimmied onstage, joshed with her trumpet player and then launched into an ultra-hip rendition of “Let Me Off Uptown.” Hey, wasn’t that Anita O’Day?
Nah, that was actually Nashville’s über-talented jazz stylist Annie Sellick, who was presenting a tribute to O’Day at the Frist auditorium. The concert was part of an annual collaboration between the Nashville Jazz Workshop and the art center called “Jazz on the Move.” These programs, now in their sixth year, combine performances with discussions about major epics and personalities in jazz history.
O’Day was a transformational figure who helped move jazz from swing to bebop. Born Anita Belle Colton in 1919, she got her start in the big band era, singing in uptown Chicago nightclubs. From the get-go, however, O’Day was different. Unlike most big band female vocalists, she refused to be a “girly-girl,” so she ditched the traditional ballroom gown in favor of a band jacket and skirt. She changed her name to O’Day (pig Latin for “dough”) and developed a vocal style that emphasized rhythm and dynamics over melody. (O’Day claimed that she couldn’t hold long notes because her uvula had inadvertently been excised during a botched tonsillectomy.)
Her first big hit came in 1941, when she recorded the novelty song “Let Me Off Uptown” with trumpeter Roy Eldridge and the Gene Krupa Band. Sellick and trumpeter Rod McGaha recreated this performance at the start of Sunday’s concert, playing the tune with a mix of humor and sassy attitude.
The highlight of O’Day’s career arguably came during the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival (the Greatest Generation’s version of Woodstock). The performance was the subject of the documentary Jazz on a Summer’s Day and showcased O’Day – in black dress, white gloves and wide-brimmed hat – singing an unforgettable rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
Sellick recreated this historic performance with uncanny accuracy. It began with drummer Josh Hunt tapping the snare with his hands, creating a beatnik-cool rhythmic pattern. Sellick joined in at first with a singsongy delivery that embellished and augmented the drums – it was as if her voice had suddenly become part of the rhythm section. Then she shifted into high gear, turning the song into an up-tempo bebop romp.
Sellick demonstrated O’Day’s modernist approach to jazz in a performance of “Tea for Two.” First, Sellick sang the tune straight, emphasizing the saccharine, pre-Betty Friedan sentiment of the lyrics – “Day will break and I’ll wake / And start to bake a sugar cake / For you to take for all the boys to see.” Then she launched into the song O’Day style, with its rapid-fire staccato phrasing that treated syllables the way Charlie Parker dealt with notes.
O’Day preferred to use her voice as a rhythmically vital bebop instrument, but she could sing beautifully and mellifluously as well. Sellick demonstrated this lyrical approach in a deeply felt performance of “Tenderly,” which featured pianist Lori Mechem providing Oscar Peterson-like accompaniment, complete with quicksilver, crystalline passagework. Sellick ended her hour-long set with “Honeysuckle Rose,” a performance that imitated O’Day’s most viscous and suggestive delivery style – “honey-SUCK-le rose.” Yeah, baby!
At the end, Sellick asked for questions. A woman in the front row had just one: Will you sing another song? Sellick and her rhythm section, Mechem, Hunt and bassist Roger Spencer, had prepared nothing. Nevertheless, they played a selection from Sellick’s Stardust on My Sleeve with amazing polish. It was a tribute to this group’s fabulous musicianship.
*photo by Tamara Reynolds
