High Times Hard Times [Paperback]

Anita O'Day (Author), George Eells (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004

"...in the tradition of the best jazz autobiographies...a fascinating travelogue through the jazz world, filled with vivid images of Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, Roy Eldridge and Billie Holiday...Her prose is as hip as her music." -The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The record of [the] early years is like the story of the music itself: rich, exciting, innovative; featuring the primitive beauty of the twenties when one foot was still in showbiz; the thirties with hip sophistication and hard swinging for hard times; the explosive forties of pre-war big-band bashes and post-war bop; and then the fifties, going off in a hundred directions with a needle in the arm.... it is the best jazz autobiography I've ever read".

--Jim Christy, (Toronto) Globe and Mail

"...in the tradition of the best jazz autobiographies...a fascinating travelogue through the jazz world, filled with vivid images of Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, Roy Eldridge and Billie Holiday...Her prose is as hip as her music." - The New York Times Book Review --The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Limelight Editions (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879101180
• ISBN-13: 978-0879101183
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #679,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Candid, excellent, jazz autobiographhy, May 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: High Times Hard Times (Paperback)

Seems like a truly honest, candid account of the jazz life of a famous jazz singer, warts and all. Very touching in its candor in which the singer's habits brought down her considerable talents and what could have seemed like a glamorous life on the road really was far more debased than what one might imagine. Besides the sordid side, a lot of opinions about the jazz abilities of a lot of famed musicians of the forties and fifties; generally, a very honest, open and sometimes painful account of the jazz life of a great artist. I had the pleasure of meeting the aritst in person at a performance a few years ago, and she revealed that she had never read the final product herself. Highly worthwhile.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In her jargon , this memoir captures the life of Anita O'Day, November 7, 2005

By 

kooky Kid "Bookfiend1818" (east coast) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: High Times Hard Times (Paperback)

I gobbled this one up. Fascinating, intimate , deeply honest.I agree that parts of Anita's story do sound like a gritty hardboiled paperback pulp novel- but that's the way it was.Interesting to see the effects of the first foray in the "war against drugs"- Anita was set up several times by government officials and she served hard prison time for a couple of pot seeds, insane! Anita seems part Bille Holiday- part Frances Farmer- because she definitely lived on her own terms and paid the price.
An interesting part of the book is the background,where the authors painted a realistic portrait of a single parent household in the depression ;Anita's mother was one of the coldest I can recall- although not outright abusive, she was just not capable of warmth period.Readers will find a rare look at the show business of the Depressin 30's where Anita cut her teeth in the walkathon circuit. This arena has not been covered to death in memoirs- a large swatch of the public, looking for cheap live entertainment, went to traveling shows of a sort - a cross between vaudeville and the circus I suppose, where a living could be made by show biz aspirants , by marathon dancing.This was tough stuff.
I find that Anita's passion for jazz- song styling- is immense, it is essentially the the only beacon in her long rough and tumble life.She is able to articulate just what it is that she is learning all along the way. Never commercial, she was a true non-diva bohemian. The 14 year heroin addiction is a sad story- but it goes right along with the program. After two jail stints and upon discovering a tea-totalling religious fanatic that has one small caveat ( he only likes things he can inject with a hypo), Anita figures- I got the name, why not play the game? She figured it would keep the cirrosis at bay. No kidding...
This book is about her life- the multi dimensions, unlike other showbiz memoirs, it 's not about name dropping, it's just about how it was for her, and much time is spent on the "craft" and what it means.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read with some editing flaws, October 21, 2000

By 

Sasha "lampic" (at sea...sailing somewhere) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: High Times Hard Times (Paperback)

At 3 a.m. last night I finally read a last chapter,couldnt put it down before.Yes,Anita O'Day writting voice sounds very much like her singing self: ironic,witty,tough hip "swing chick" (her words) who didnt give a damn what others think.Her self-destructivness very much echoes another famous artist (in rock music) Marianne Faithfull,in fact this two women have much more in common than you think.Both survivors,both eventually come back and yes,both are still live preformers.Her opinion about other jazz singers are sometimes strange ("Like me,Ella never had a great voice"?) - but think that she was commercially oversahdowed by Fizgerald.As much as Anita's "Verve" albums are beautiful and timeless (I really think woman was a highest-class jazz improvisator,she grew up from Billie Holiday and made her own style) this book is sometimes painful to read.I believe there is a general curiousity about somebody's dirty linen,in this case it almost overshadow her art - at some points it reads like 50's detective story,with smokey jazz clubs,jazz musicians as a drug addicts and cops always around to "find" (read:set up) drugs in dressing room.With all beautiful music she made,its a pity that editor of the book find more interesting to emphasise her drug addiction,since her arrests,sanatoriums,jails and courts get more space than anything else.I dont think this was her intention,probably publisher wanted scandalous story,but if you dont know her music,this book can make you think that Anita O'Day was a famous junkie who had a music as a hobby.