In March 1947, undercover officers arriving to raid a California house heard Dizzy Gillespie playing trumpet from a tree in the front yard. The homeowner was Anita O'Day, a singer who fundamentally altered American vocal music. This episode traces her fractured Chicago childhood, her escape into Depression-era walkathons where she once covered 4,000 miles in 97 days, and the stage name O'Day, pig Latin for dough, a daily reminder of her need to get paid.

We follow her into Gene Krupa's integrated big band, where she refused to be window dressing beside trumpeter Roy Eldridge, scored the 1941 hit Let Me Off Uptown, and wore the same band uniform as the men while earning $7.50 a week. Then we look at how a childhood tonsillectomy that removed her uvula forced her to invent a percussive, snare-drum style of scat singing suited to bebop, her Ve ...