O’Day Gives New Voice to Old Standards : Music: The great jazz singer is enjoying a CD-prompted resurgence of popularity.

Jazz singer Anita O’Day gave up city life in Hollywood eight years ago for a mobile home park in Hemet, but she ventures out for dates in jazz clubs. Sunday night, she closed a five-night appearance at Elario’s in La Jolla.

Touted by critics as one of the great jazz singers, O’Day, 71, gives a fairly down-to-earth assessment of her own abilities.

“My voice is the same as it always was. I have no voice,” she said. “When I was 7, mom put me in the hospital to have my tonsils removed. Years later, I looked at the paper work and found that they accidentally cut off my uvula. I can’t sing, I’m a song stylist. You can think that one over. I saw that around the Krupa days. I did novelties instead of ballads because I couldn’t hold a tone, but now I’ve got that down good.”

Critics have no doubts about her way with a ballad. She was an effective torch singer almost from the start, as evidenced by the 1941 recording “Skylark” with drummer Gene Krupa’s band, featuring her delicate, clear voice carrying the melancholy tune. Her straightforward style eventually inspired such singers as June Christy and Chris Conner.

“That was my first ballad,” O’Day recalled. “I thought it was nice, I was just sort of embarrassed. I asked for a box to stand on to give me a psychological lift while I sang.”

Singer Billie Holliday has been cited by jazz historians as an early influence.

“When I heard her sing, I said, ‘If she can sing with that tone, maybe I can make a dollar too,’ ” O’Day said.

Eventually, she developed an instrumental approach, emulating the melody lines produced by great horn players such as Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. Also, she has more than a passing interest in a song’s lyrics, both their meaning and musical interpretation.

She’s studying a dozen songs for an album she hopes to record later this year.

“I learn the lyrics as a poem, then I memorize the chords, then improvise,” O’Day said.

Improvising is one of O’Day’s strong suits, a skill not mastered by many singers. She won’t sing a song the same way twice.

O’Day believes her voice has changed very little during nearly 50 years in jazz, which she attributes to good health.

“I ride the bike every day, and I weigh the same as when I was 20. I saw Rosemary Clooney on a Bob Hope special, and she was so big, I said, ‘What is that?’ I’m English-Irish and we stay tall and thin.”

O’Day began her entertainment career singing in a burlesque show, and worked with local bands in Chicago before joining Krupa in 1941.

Later, she sang in Woody Herman’s and Stan Kenton’s bands and recorded a variety of solo albums between bouts with alcohol and drug abuse. She once said that she was most comfortable around Krupa’s band because the musicians played poker and drank beer for breakfast, while Kenton’s crew read books and played bridge.

Some of her best recorded efforts are becoming widely available all over again on CD, sometimes with sound quality so good, the singer barely recognizes herself.

“Who dat?” she said she asked, after hearing one of a half dozen CD re-releases. A thorough list of her recordings is included in her 1981 autobiography, “High Times, Hard Times.”

Her last album, “In a Mellow Tone,” was nominated for a Grammy last year.

Saxophonist Gordon Brisker, O’Day’s musical director, joined her at Elario’s in a band rounded out by locals Jim Plank on drums and Bob Magnusson on bass.

According to O’Day, she isn’t ready to debut any of the music from her pending album.

“We’ll be doing the things people know and love from the ‘40s, and the jazz standards we improvise on,” she said.