JAZZ REVIEW : O’Day Lights Up the Night

Anita O’Day, who returned Wednesday to the Vine St. Bar & Grill, is one survivor who has been left miraculously unscarred by the inroads of time.

At 72, she looks great, has essentially the same sound, almost the same trim figure, and much of the same repertoire, some of it going back to her days with the Gene Krupa band in 1941. Intonation? That hasn’t changed either. When you go to hear Anita O’Day you don’t expect Kathleen Battle.

What you do get is an unreconstructed, dedicated jazz singer, true to her pristine values, whether loping through “Honeysuckle Rose” with bassist Bob Maize, or cueing Bill Cunliffe for his piano solos, or telling drummer Jim Paxson “This next tune is in A-flat. Can you handle it?” (Nobody laughed. Not a very hip audience.)

Most helpful in her backing is Gordon Brisker, the tenor saxophonist and flutist who opened the show with a rolling workout on Benny Golson’s “Stablemates.”

O’Day moved up through the decades with the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” but soon segued into a stomping treatment of Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays.” For “Let Me Off Uptown” Brisker took the male vocal role originated by Krupa’s trumpeter, Roy Eldridge. O’Day’s plea to the audience to get into a nostalgic mood seemed to work.

Nevertheless, in what she described as a workshop set later in the evening, she tackled two songs that were new to her, “Bluesette” and “A Song for You.” She read her parts, directed the band, enjoyed the challenge and justified the experiment. Better a slightly hesitant but demanding version of a less antiquated work than the ten thousandth rundown of “Tea for Two.” She will continue to try out fresh material through Saturday.