At Mister Kelly's

Acquired last month, an LP copy of Anita O’Day at Mister Kelly’s, originally a 1959 release on the Verve label, though I can’t be sure if my copy, a South African pressing, dates back to that year. On the back of the sleeve is one blurb explaining “Everyday is somebody’s birthday – Give a national record gift token – Exchangeable anywhere in Southern Africa” and another reassuring the mono LP’s buyer that “Stereophonic equipment will not cause this dynamic high fidelity recording to ever become outmoded!” The sleevenotes are courtesy of Verve’s founder Norman Granz.

It’s a very good album, well recorded, with O’Day in fine voice throughout on standards such as ‘But Not For Me’ & a skitteringly rapid ‘Tea for Two’; and on less familiar numbers like ‘Varsity Drag’ & ‘The Wildest Gal in Town’. O’Day’s long-time partner in crime John Poole plays drums, with Joe Masters on piano and L.B. Wood on bass. It joined another similarly-enjoyable LP already on my shelves recorded at the same venue the year before: Sarah Vaughan At Mister Kelly’s, where the singer is accompanied by Jimmy Jones (piano), Richard Davis (bass) and Roy Haynes (drums). Mine is a late ’60s budget re-press on the Mercury Value Label.

It goes without saying that Vaughan and her trio sound fantastic. There’s a little more in the way of as-it-happened spontaneity than on the O’Day record, with the sound of a dropped microphone and some hastily-improvised lyrics at the close of ‘Willow Weep For Me’, for instance. With most of Vaughan’s records from this era featuring big-band or orchestral backing, it’s great to hear her here in the relaxed company of a fine jazz trio. Mr. Kelly’s was a Chicago nightspot in business between 1953 and 1975. The sleevenotes on the back are the work of the club’s proprietor Oscar Marienthal who writes “Here you get this delightful evening of Sarah Vaughan for less than an average minimum and cover charge, and you get it over and over again, as often as you want. That’s enough to break a night club proprietor’s heart…”