Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer

I've not seen the documentary in full, but I've seen a lot of the footage that I know to be on it. My comment is mainly about mgconlan's '09 comment about Leonard Feather's comment about Anita being the only white female Jazz singer to equal what we think of as "the big 3" female Jazz singers. I agree with Feather. mgconlan points out other white femmes of note. I'm not that familiar with the Boswells or Bailey. Christy is too cool, too icy. I don't mean that in a bad way, I just find her style limited. In the mid-Seventies I became a fan of Chris Connor. "Lonely Woman" was the first song I heard by her, which is about as "outside" as she got on record. But I collected Bethlehem for her early stuff ( what she was doing in the early Fifties was pretty advanced) and Atlantic, of which I've owned almost all of her releases. I love her, but she is no Anita O'Day. Color being the theme - listening to Ella, she very often sounds white, yet still has the Jazz feel. Anita may sound "blacker" in a sense, but it is more her sense of feeling - this woman could throw some curve balls melodically while fooling around with the time and deconstruct a tune like nobody else. She could really read 'em. I put her up there with the big 3.