the rix mix

1. Betty Comden, who with her longtime collaborator Adolph Green wrote the lyrics and often the librettos for some of the most celebrated musicals of stage and screen, died yesterday in Manhattan. She was 89 and lived in Manhattan.
2. Robert Lockwood Jr., 91, a Delta blues guitarist who became the torchbearer of Robert Johnson's guitar legacy and a revered musician in his own right, died Nov. 21.
3. Anita O’Day, whose coolly ebullient and rhythmically assured vocal style made her a premier singer of both the big-band and postwar jazz eras, and whose taste for fast living secured her name as one of jazz’s toughest survivors, died yesterday in Los Angeles. She was 87.

Amazing the hard-living Lockwood & O'Day lived to such ripe ages. Anita O'Day is a special favorite of mine. Somewhat "cool" & unsentimental in style (which doesn't mean lacking emotion), her attitude was that she was in the band as well as in front of it; she performed with the musicians, listened to what they were doing, & they in turn collaborated with her. This was a departure from the 1940s "songbird" era when gowned female singers adorned big bands like ornaments, stepping forward to warble a verse & refrain. Addiction problems sidetracked her recording career several times, she didn't fully beat heroin until the late 60s & kept boozing well into her 8th decade. But she was an original with a huge legacy, influencing singers up to the present day.

Labels: music