VAUGHAN

Her rich contralto voice, combined with an impeccable pitch and spellbinding style, made Sarah Vaughan an artist of considerable importance in jazz and pop music. With more than 1,000 records and nearly 100 albums to her credit, Vaughan was, according to critic Gary Giddins, “jazz’s greatest virtuoso singer.”

Born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 27, 1924, Sarah Lois Vaughan began studying the piano and organ when she was seven. Her mother, a laundress, played piano and sang in a local church choir. By age 12, Sarah was a featured soloist in the choir and also its organist. In 1942, she entered the Amateur Night at the Apollo talent contest, winning the first prize of ten dollars and a week’s engagement at the legendary Harlem Theater. The great black singer Billy Eckstine, who performed with the Earl Hines Orchestra, heard Sarah and urged Hines to hire her.

When Eckstine launched his own orchestra in 1944, Sarah joined the new ensemble, which featured future jazz luminaries such as Charlie PARKER, Dizzy GILLESPIE, and Miles DAVIS. During this time, Vaughan cut her first records, including a legendary version of ”Lover Man” with Parker and Gillespie, and signed as a solo artist with Musicraft Records in 1945.

Trumpeter George Treadwell, Vaughan’s first husband, became a Svengali-like manager who molded her image from that of an ugly ducking to a glamorous star. Between 1945 and 1954, which included a four-year stint with the major Columbia label, she became one of modern jazz’s top singers and earned the nickname ”the Divine One.”

In 1954, Vaughan launched two simultaneous careers—as a pop hitmaker for Mercury Records and a jazz artist for its EmArcy subsidiary. She cut several pop hits such as ”Misty,” ”Tenderly,” the million-selling ”Broken-Hearted Melody,” several albums of show music (most notably a duet LP of Irving BERLIN songs with Eckstine), and several small-group jazz sides with Clifford BROWN and Cannonball ADDERLEY. In the first half of the 1960s, she recorded for Roulette, Mercury, and Columbia before taking a five-year break.

Sarah Vaughan performing at the 1985 Newport Jazz Festival—she also appeared at the first event in 1954.

Vaughan returned to music in the early 1970s with a new maturity and a deeper range (the result perhaps of chain-smoking). During this period she recorded some of her best work for producer Norman GRANZ’S Pablo label, backed by everything from small ensembles and strings to big bands and Brazilian rhythm sections. Even though she became increasingly ill in the 1980s, she still performed at concerts and recorded frequently—including a 1985 concept album based on poems by Pope John Paul II. Vaughan died at her home in Hidden Hills, California, on April 3, 1990.

Michael R. Ross

SARAH

VAUGHAN