From a broken home in Chicago, Anita O'Day made her showbusiness beginnings as a
dancer, leaving home at 14 to compete in the various "walk-a-thons" popular
around America during the hardships of the 1930s. A meeting with drummer Don
O'Day (who she married in 1937) encouraged her ambition to be a singer, at first
with the Max Miller Quartet and then, in 1941, with Gene Krupa. She went on to
work with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton when her unusually aggressive swing vocal
style - which she attributed to a throat operation when she was young -
established her as one of the most stri...