>> Miss Day.
> She's still among us?
Not only alive, but also kicking. And she has a fan in Diamanda Galas.
I consider that the highest praise a singer can get:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/05/entertainment/la-et-doris-day-films-20120105
[...]
But just a few months shy of her 90th birthday, she is back in the limelight. Day recently released her first recording in 17 years, "My Heart" and she's been doing phone interviews to support the album, which features songs mostly recorded for the animal series, because all the proceeds go to her foundation. The 1956 Oscar-winning tune, "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)," which she introduced in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Man Who Knew Too Much," is being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in February.
But even more important, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. has awarded her its Lifetime Achievement Award. Day will not be coming to Los Angeles for the Jan. 13 ceremony. But in an interview last week from Carmel, she said that she was thrilled with the award, especially since her last feature film was the 1968 family comedy "With Six You Get Egg Roll."
[...]
http://www.spookyelectricproductions.com/celebrity_rnd_galas.html
“I love Doris Day,” [Galas] screams across the table when I mention the 50s icon, “I adore her! Doris Day never breaks timbre. She sings a line with a perfect ligatto and she never breaks it. She respects the song and does everything in service to it. She was a different person than Peggy Lee. She doesn’t swing as hard, but that doesn’t matter. Her voice, it’s just extraordinary. Sure, some of the songs she sang were garbage, but some of the songs Judy Garland sang were garbage. Still, if you hear Judy balancing ‘Never, Never Will I Marry,’ you go, man, that bitch can swing!”