“All I know is that there are four beats to a bar and there are a million ways to phrase a tune.” –Anita O’Day (undated Down Beat, circa 1938-39)

Anita O'Day

Described by Minnesota Monthly as “one of the most powerful vocalists on the Twin Cities scene,” Lucia Newell pays tribute to the late Anita O’Day in a special presentation at the Artists Quarter on November 18th. She will be backed by a band even O’Day would envy, with Phil Aaron (piano), Gordy Johnson (bass) and Phil Hey (drums.)

Anita O’Day

Known as much for her frank independent spirit as for her cool vibrato-less tone, Anita O’Day was an integral part of the Gene Krupa band in the 1940s, forming a legendary partnership with trumpeter/vocalist Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge. A star through the 1960s, heroin addiction almost cost her both life and career, but she came back to perform and record, author an acclaimed autobiography, and released her last recording just a few months before her death at age 87 in 2006. She was a true pioneer whose insistence that the vocalist be an equal partner with the instrumentalists in the band blazed a trail for a generation that followed, including Betty Roche, June Christy and Chris Connor. And Lucia Newell.

Lucia Newell

Lucia Newell©Andrea Canter

The Minneapolis native spent her early career singing and studying in Los Angeles, Brazil, and Mexico, returning to the Twin Cities as a studio backup vocalist for Jimmy Jam Harris, Terry Lewis and Monte Moir of Flyte Time. Over the past two decades, Lucia has been engaged in voice-over work, performing, teaching, composing, and pursuing her life-long study of music. A linguist as well as vocalist, she writes lyrics in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and has translated many of her favorite Brazilian songs. In addition to her appearances with her quartet, Lucia has performed often with Soul Café, a jazz trio (Laura Caviani, Steve Blons, and Brad Holden) combining poetry and music. Her first recording, Enter You, Enter Love, with guitarist Joan Griffith, was hailed as a “wonderfully surprising collection of love songs...that brings to mind steamy, moonlit tropical nights” (Sun Current). Her work with Pete Whitman, along with her love of Billy Strayhorn, led to her 2005 release, Steeped in Strayhorn, described by Alan Bargebuhr in Cadence as “alive with authentic jazz affirmation.” 

Earlier this year, Lucia paid tribute to one of singers she describes as a “music mentor,” the late Betty Carter. Now she turns her attention and talents to another muse, Anita O’Day. 

Lucia and Anita

Why a salute to Anita O’Day? Notes Lucia, “I’m a big fan... She was one of my big mentors. Billie Holiday was my first jazz singing mentor, O’Day was my second, and Betty Carter was the third...I never saw Billie but I did see Anita O’Day live...in California, in the Valley at a club in Ventura... I grew up listening to Billie Holiday. My dad would play a lot of Billie and Lena Horne. When I first heard O’Day, I did not associate her with Holiday at all. So I listened to her over a couple of years, and then you have to stop listening to someone or you start to sound a lot like them. I really liked her, jazzy voice, her delivery, she was always swinging and jazzy sounding, not a lot of vibrato. I just liked how cool the sound was, she seemed to be very much one of the players in the band, and she scatted. I really liked the way she scatted—there was a lot about her I liked.” 

But it was many years before Lucia “rediscovered” her early muse. “I got turned on to Betty Carter... I listened to a lot of different musicians, too...a lot of saxophonists and trumpet players.   Going back now, I can hear how enormously influenced O’Day was by Billie Holiday. She came up listening to Holiday and started singing later, but they were not that different in age, just a few years. Billie started singing earlier and was popular and out there earlier. Anita started the process when she was 15 but was not really in clubs til 18 or 19 in Chicago. Early on, she got into the Krupa band, and was also with Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Benny Goodman―she really did it! I didn’t know much about her life, even though I read her book [High Times, Hard Times] 20 years ago, but it was so much about her habit. I remember thinking, what a life of tragedy and being glad I didn’t follow that path. But I really had not listened to her in years. Now I can hear her connection to Holiday, and she herself said Billie Holiday was a big mentor for her.” 

In her one encounter with her “mentor” at the club in California, Lucia recalls O’Day told her, “I am not a jazz singer, I am a jazz song stylist.”  But especially after listening to so much of O’Day’s recordings as she prepares for the show, Lucia notes that “she was a singer, not just a vocal stylist. She didn’t think of herself as a person with a voice with great range or legitimate abilities... but wanted to be jazzy, so she had to call herself something. But she is singing, she sings beautifully... She has a natural, pretty vibrato and you can tell she knows how to sing without it, and that takes work.  But she’s someone who did not want identify with singers and their pretty dresses, the canaries fronting the band. She wanted to be a jazz singer but not the kind with the glittery gown.” 

Preparing for the Show

Let Me Off Uptown

As for working with the band ahead of time, Lucia doesn’t schedule rehearsals. “These players work really hard and we’re all musicians and can read music. So I make a CD for them with as many of the tunes as I have on recordings, so they can listen to the original style, and then I give them their book a week or two ahead if they want to just run through the charts on their own.  When we see each other at the gig, that’s the first time we’re playing the charts together! It worked for the Betty Carter tribute—we had a little talk through just before we would come out.  We’d sit in the band room and talk about this intro and that, this tempo.” Lucia, on the other hand, rehearses herself.  “I go over these tunes. Some I have to transcribe from the record because you can’t find the music anywhere.  It’s a lot of time and energy but it’s worth it, those are all skills that I like to keep up...I actually like that, it’s a very satisfying feeling, like a puzzle and you have to figure something out, map it out, and write it as correctly as possible.” 

Given all the work that goes into just one show, will Lucia likely perform her O’Day show again? “I don’t know, just have to get through the first one,” she said. “Some people say I should do Betty Carter every year on her birthday, but I don’t think I want to! It’s a challenge for me, it gives me something to work towards, and I learn so much in the process, honing skills, and I learn a bunch of new tunes. I can then take these tunes and they will become more mine. This time I will try to do it more like [Anita] does... When we do this concert, we honor her arrangements, how she recorded it, her actual approach to music, and then after that, they’re mine, I can do whatever I want with them. But, it might be fun, after putting all this work into it, to do it again sometime.” 

At the Artists Quarter, November 18

Lucia Newell © Andrea Canter

Phil Aaron (piano) had long-running weekly solo and trio gigs at the Hotel Sofitel. He has been a mainstay of the Phil Hey Quartet, leads his own trio, and is a first call for area vocalists and touring musicians. Drawing inspiration from Bill Evans, Cedar Walton, Tommy Flanagan, and Keith Jarrett, he “can swing hard or wax romantic at the keyboard" (Minneapolis Star Tribune). 

Gordy Johnson graduated from the Eastman School of Music where he majored in flute. As a bassist, he toured with Maynard Ferguson, Doc Severinsen, and the Paul Winter Consort, has appeared on over 50 recordings, and keeps time for most local and many visiting artists. He has released four albums (so far!) featuring trios with different combinations of pianists and drummers (Trios, Volumes 1, 2 and 3.0; and GJ4). Recently he has toured with acclaimed vocalist Stacy Kent, including a performance at Manhattan’s Birdland earlier this summer.

A former student of Ed Blackwell, Phil Hey teaches jazz drum at Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. He toured with the late Dewey Redman and has performed with Kenny Barron, Charlie Rouse, Benny Carter, and Benny Golson. Over the past year, he has also toured with Stacy Kent, appearing with her at the recent gig at Birdland. Phil leads his own esteemed quartet, appears with the Eric Dolphy tribute ensemble, the Out to Lunch Quintet, with Pete Whitman’s X-Tet, and is frequently on the bandstand with other local and visiting national artists. His 2005 quartet release, Subduction, topped many “best of the year” lists, and his 2009 duo recording with Kelly Rossum, Conflict, should do the same.  

The evening will include such O’Day hits as “Let Me Off Uptown.” “I Can’t Get Started,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Indian Summer,” “Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Heart,” “Four,” “Early Autumn,” “Tenderly,” “Old Devil Moon,” and “How High the Moon.” 

The Artists Quarter is located at 408 St. Peter Street, downtown St. Paul in the lower level of the Hamm Building. Sets begin at 9 pm. Visit www.artistsquarter.com.   For more about Lucia Newell, visit www.lucianewell.com Click here for an obit bio of Anita O’Day.  

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites