In 1948, during the dog days of summer, Vaughan scored her first pop hit: “It’s Magic,” a sentimental, romantic ballad featured in that summer’s film Romance on the High Seas. She recorded the tune on December 27, 1947, as part of a year-end push to stockpile new sides before another American Federation of Musicians recording ban began on January 1, 1948. The single, paired with “It’s You or No One,” also from Romance, was released at the end of April. And in August, it finally made its way onto the all-important Billboard charts. Once again, the nation’s disc jockeys came through for Vaughan. Her recording of “It’s Magic” spent eleven weeks, until the end of October, on the “Most Played by Disc Jockeys” chart, peaking at No. 11. Of the hundreds of songs available to DJs in the nation’s major markets, there were only ten that they played more often. Boosted by this exposure, in September Vaughan’s “It’s Magic” made a brief appearance, just two weeks, on the “Best-Selling Popular Retail Records” list. The black press reported that she had sold four hundred thousand copies, predicting that she would soon surpass a half million.1 And on September 12, Vaughan sang the tune on Ed Sullivan’s popular television show Toast of the Town.2 “It’s Magic” was, by far, her biggest seller to date, her breakout record, and the culmination of the momentum that had been building for the past eighteen months.
Vaughan was not the only vocalist to find success with “It’s Magic.” In the 1940s, it was common for many artists to record, or cover, the same tune, and in an effort to maximize sales record companies usually released covers to appeal to each segment of the larger music market: country, folk, race, and, of course, pop, the largest market. “It’s Magic” was one of the most popular and most played songs of 1948, with Doris Day, Vic Damone, Dick Haymes, Gordon MacRae, Tony Martin, and the Buddy Kaye Quintet all releasing discs in hopes of finding their niche in the market. Doris Day’s cover outpaced them all. The up-and-coming blond, blue-eyed former big band singer made her film debut in Romance on the High Seas and performed its signature song. Her recording of “It’s Magic” entered the charts in early July, right after the film opened, and stayed there for twenty-one weeks, peaking at No. 2. It was the beginning of her decades-long dominance of both the box office and pop charts.
But Vaughan came in a close second, succeeding, in many respects, against the odds. She was the only black artist of the bunch, and her record company, Musicraft, was small, with less clout and fewer resources than the labels backing her competitors, powerhouses like Columbia, Mercury, Decca, Capitol, and Victor. Vaughan’s traction with “It’s Magic” was an impressive feat, a watershed moment in her career. It provided an opportunity for Musicraft to realize its lofty sales goals promised Vaughan in her contract two years earlier. And more important, it demonstrated Vaughan’s potential to become a viable crossover artist. Unlike the progressive jazz standards that she had become known for, her version of “It’s Magic” was a deliberately commercial single designed to appeal to mainstream, predominantly white audiences. Backed by a lush string orchestra, complete with harp interludes, Vaughan sang the melody without her trademark embellishments. The disc showcased the sumptuous beauty of her voice, and audiences, both black and white (and not just whites who considered themselves members of the jazz intelligentsia), liked what they heard. She had more fans than ever, and disc jockeys began referring to her as the “Girl with the Magic Voice.” It was a play on words, a reference to the song’s title, but also an acknowledgment that her voice was special, unique, and powerful.
Yet Vaughan didn’t profit financially as much as she should have from the success of “It’s Magic,” nor was she able to build on the momentum created by her first pop hit. In the fall, as DJs across the county continued to push “It’s Magic,” Musicraft was struggling financially. There had been hints of trouble before. In the spring and summer of 1947, as her national profile grew and she became a darling of DJs across the country, Vaughan was forced to take a seven-month hiatus from the recording studio as the label reorganized and scrambled to secure more funding. And now, in the fall of 1948, Musicraft was on the verge of bankruptcy. In October, the label began liquidating its assets, including the plant used to press records; it stopped releasing and distributing new records; and it stopped paying its artists record royalties.
Vaughan’s frustration was palpable. “I mean, a long time ago, when I was with Musicraft, I used to go in there to see the guy about the records,” she told Les Tomkins in 1977. “He would sit in his big office, and show me the big pictures on the walls of all the yachts he owned.” Meanwhile, she was not receiving royalties for the records that she had sold. On September 14, 1948, Vaughan received her usual quarterly statement from the label—minus her royalty check. They owed her $3,117.93, her share of sales from almost eighty-eight thousand records.3 And due to Musicraft’s financial woes, she had fewer records to sell (one possible reason why her cover of “It’s Magic” spent only two weeks on Billboard’s bestselling list). Excited new fans who had discovered Vaughan on the radio wanted to hear more. But they could not find copies of “It’s Magic” or any other Vaughan sides in stores. Record bins were empty because Musicraft could not meet the demand for their most popular, bestselling artist. “Soon after that [Musicraft] went bankrupt!” said Vaughan. “Just when I was passing Doris Day’s big hit on ‘It’s Magic.’”4
Her recording career, which months earlier had seemed so promising, stalled. She was under contract until June 1950, and even though Musicraft had breached her contract, they refused to release her. Stuck at a dysfunctional record company, Vaughan sued Musicraft. She requested her back royalties, rights to the thirty-seven masters she recorded for the label, and, most important, a release from her contract. As her lawyers waded through the legal mess, Vaughan continued to tour and make radio and television appearances. Fortunately, her popularity with DJs, combined with the sales of “It’s Magic,” had captured the attention of executives from the major record companies. They courted Vaughan, and Treadwell, her husband-manager, worked behind the scenes to secure a new deal.
On January 3, 1949, Vaughan secretly signed with Columbia Records. Two weeks later, Musicraft offered to release her from her contract if she waived all rights to her royalties and masters, paid them $10,000, and cut six more sides for Musicraft, all at her own expense.5 (The label desperately needed new material to release but did not have the funds to produce it themselves.) Treadwell promptly rejected the offer.6 Tensions with Musicraft escalated again when, on January 20, Vaughan stepped into Columbia’s studios to record three sides. She returned five days later to record three more.7 Vaughan was moving on, with the assumption that she would soon be free from Musicraft, but the struggling label would not let their most popular artist go. Then Musicraft threatened to sue Columbia for breach of contract, and Columbia stopped all work on Vaughan’s new discs and waited for her legal troubles to pass; no progress was made for the next two months.8
Finally, on March 17, 1949, minutes before Vaughan and her attorney prepared to make her case in federal court in New York, she settled with Musicraft. They agreed to release Vaughan from her contract if she agreed to waive all royalties owed to her for records sold before January 1, 1949—an unknown amount, estimated by industry insiders as somewhere between $7,500 and $15,000; to decrease her future royalty earnings in half, from 5 percent per record to 2.5 percent; to record four new sides for Musicraft at her own expense; and to pay Musicraft $1,500 in attorney fees.9 Musicraft retained control of all of Vaughan’s master recordings. The deal was far from perfect, but Vaughan, after months of inaction and legal woes, was now free to move on with her new label, Columbia. She had successfully cleared another hurdle in her journey to find an audience for her musical vision and voice.
Columbia Records could offer Vaughan opportunities that Musicraft and other independent labels like it simply could not. She now had the backing of a major player in the industry. Columbia, Victor, RCA, and Capitol were the top four record labels, and, after the second American Federation of Musicians strike in 1948, they controlled 90 percent of the market. Columbia was at the forefront of recording technology. Their research and development department had just invested $250,000 inventing the 331/3 rpm long-playing microgroove record, which would revolutionize the sound of recorded music and the way audiences heard and consumed music. Columbia owned its manufacturing plants and an unparalleled network of distributors. Unlike other labels, including the struggling Musicraft, Columbia eliminated all middlemen, which allowed them to cut production and marketing costs and maximize profits, all while reaching as many listeners as possible.10 And Columbia could offer Vaughan more money. The black press speculated that her five-year contract was worth at least a quarter million dollars in future royalties. It was an impressive sum, especially for a black artist, and for many within the black community it validated not just Vaughan and her talent but all black talent. Her contract with Columbia symbolized racial progress. The financial terms of her contract were in fact more modest, and it was for three years, with two one-year options. But it did include a promise to record sixteen sides a year, twelve of which had to be released.
Columbia vice president Manie Sacks promised to rush Vaughan’s first Columbia releases to market in record time. Sacks was responsible for bringing Vaughan to Columbia, and during his nine-year tenure at the label he had nurtured along the careers of singers Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and most recently Doris Day, making them all household names. He had a knack for discovering new talent, pairing an artist with the right material, usually sentimental ballads, and then backing her with effective promotion. Sacks used the same strategy with Vaughan. In April, during the buildup to her debut disc, a pairing of “As You Desire Me,” a lush, romantic ballad accompanied by a full orchestra, and “Black Coffee,” a ballad with blues inflections, he announced that the disc had preorders of more than 150,000 copies.11 Photos of her controversial studio sessions in January circulated in the press. And Columbia widely distributed the disc to jockeys across the country. They played the record and touted each tune’s hit potential. “As You Desire Me” appeared on Billboard’s Disc Jockeys Pick chart for three weeks, the maximum allowed any disc, then was replaced by “Black Coffee” at the end of May. On June 27, Columbia released two more discs, followed by more in September, October, and November, all with a similar rollout. And four songs made brief appearances on Billboard’s popularity charts.
Vaughan sounded stunning on her new Columbia discs. In 1947, Columbia became the first label to use magnetic tape to record all of its master tapes. Recording on magnetic tape captured more sonic information than cutting a disc directly onto wax cylinders, the technique still used by independent labels like Musicraft, and it was quieter, with less background noise, fewer pops and crackles. The results were striking. Unlike the small, almost boxed-in, old-fashioned sound of her Musicraft releases, on Columbia Vaughan sounded modern. Her voice was fuller, richer, and more dynamic. The bell tones of her upper register were clearer, and the full-bodied tones of her contralto more luxurious and free ranging. Listeners could hear every detail as she sculpted individual notes and subtly used vibrato to punctuate her phrasing. For the first time, many of her listeners, especially those unfamiliar with her live performances, truly heard her voice.
Backed by the clout of Columbia and the increased exposure the label offered, Vaughan’s career catapulted to the next level, and, once again, the stature and prestige of her gigs improved. On July 25, 1949, she performed with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra at Robin Hood Dell, the orchestra’s summer home. She shared the bill with Duke Ellington and his orchestra in a concert praised, especially by the black press, for placing the creative vision of two of jazz’s finest artists, representatives of black music, on an equal footing with the highbrow, predominantly white, cultural institution of European classical music. In November, Vaughan achieved another career milestone when she made her first appearances at the Paramount Theatre on Broadway in New York. Another of the famed movie palaces, like the Strand, the Paramount was the biggest, most prestigious pop venue in town, a regular stomping ground for Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and countless other popular white acts. Celebrities attended Vaughan’s club dates on both coasts. Executives from MGM scouted her performances at Bop City in New York as they prepared to acquire Musicraft’s masters. Her recordings were the now-defunct label’s most valuable asset. After hearing Vaughan at the Oasis in Los Angeles, an executive from Twentieth Century Fox sent her a case of scotch and invited her to a sit-down. While nothing came of the meeting, she did sign a contract with Universal International to produce a series of film shorts to be shown in movie theaters throughout the country. She continued her rounds of the DJ radio shows, returned as a guest star on Ed Sullivan’s popular variety show, and made appearances on other nationally broadcast television programs, including CBS’s popular We the People, simulcast coast to coast on both radio and television. Vaughan introduced herself to this national audience. She told her personal story, her journey from a Newark choir girl to Columbia recording artist, and then sang “The Lord’s Prayer.” Her club dates regularly attracted celebrities, and when she returned to Café Society in December 1949, she merited $2,250 a week plus a percentage of the door—a far cry from the $200 she garnered in 1946.
Vaughan’s career clearly benefited from her associations with Columbia, but it is unclear if Columbia benefited in turn. She was the label’s marquee black vocalist, signed because she showed crossover potential. It’s likely that label executives hoped that she would become their Nat King Cole, who in the 1940s had transformed from a well-respected jazz pianist leading his own trio into a chart-topping balladeer. He scored hits with “The Christmas Song” and “Route 66” in 1946, “Nature Boy” in 1948, “Mona Lisa” in 1950, and “Too Young” and “Unforgettable” in 1951. While her discs did well, Vaughan had yet to achieve the tremendous successes of Cole, and Columbia’s pop music division, under the helm of Sacks, was foundering. The label’s pop sales ranked dead last among the four major labels. And in the spring of 1950, Columbia’s executive vice president Goddard Lieberson began to shake things up. Sacks, an old-school gentleman who came of age during the swing years, was pushed out in favor of a younger, brasher rival with a controversial yet very profitable vision for popular music.
On May 5, 1950, Vaughan returned to Columbia’s New York recording studios and was greeted by her new producer, Mitch Miller. He was a cigar-smoking thirty-eight-year-old classical oboist turned artist and repertoire man, recently lured away from Mercury. He sported a mustache and dramatic goatee, and he paired this with an equally bold, often overbearing, albeit charismatic, personality. The previous year while at Mercury, he orchestrated the runaway success of Frankie Laine’s “That Lucky Old Sun” and “Mule Train” and was earning a reputation as a hit maker with a new, revolutionary approach to popular music. He invented novelty songs, tunes that incorporated slick, unconventional sounds derived from unusual instrumentation and technological special effects or “ethnic,” nonwhite, sounds, and often both. His records for Columbia would feature harpsichords, accordions, wood blocks to simulate a cracking whip, French horns honking like geese, guitarists that sounded like chickens, dogs barking and howling, and hands clapping, not to mention technological manipulations like echo chambers and overdubbing. Miller prioritized the bottom line and felt no shame in appealing to the lowest common denominator.
It’s possible that Vaughan let out an amused chuckle when she first saw Miller, aka “the Beard.” After all, her fellow beboppers had popularized goatees, along with a distinct bebop look and language eight years earlier. But Dizzy Gillespie and his cohorts used them to signify their hipness, their status as artists of innovative, avant-garde music, and ultimately their distance, both culturally and socially, from the white American mainstream. On Miller, the goatee must have seemed like an affectation of hipness, even a little silly on a white man and industry insider committed to commercialism, especially to someone like Vaughan who increasingly epitomized hip elegance and coolness herself.
Vaughan, however, remained polite and professional, and their May 4 session was business as usual. Accompanied by Norman Leyden’s orchestra, she recorded two more romantic ballads, very much in the vein of her earlier Columbia releases produced by Sacks. Two weeks later, on May 18, she led her first (and only) jazz session for the label. Backed by an octet that included trumpeter Miles Davis and was billed as George Treadwell and His Allstars, even though Treadwell didn’t play and pianist Jimmy Jones was listed as the session’s contractor, Vaughan sang a collection of jazz standards.
“This album was a real mistake,” proclaimed Down Beat’s reviewer. “Sarah has recorded half the tunes before, in each case better.” Jazz critics of the day prized innovation and complexity, a constant evolution of style and ideas, and were frustrated that Vaughan simply rehashed the past. “All in all, spiritless and lackluster sides,” the magazine concluded.12
Yet Down Beat’s critics approved of her next two pop releases. She recorded the up-tempo “I Love the Guy” and “Thinking of You,” a slower, more contemplative ballad, on Thursday, July 27. Backed by a swinging big band, Vaughan incorporated her trademark vocal inflections on both songs, and Down Beat praised her. “[‘I Love the Guy’] demonstrates her fine ear for tonal shadings, as well as the clean simplicity of her best phrasing,” wrote the reviewer, adding, “Some of her leapings here would faze a thoroughly agile tenor man.”13 With these sides Vaughan acknowledged her jazz roots and skillfully distilled them for a more mainstream audience. She was singing jazz-infused pop. Columbia pressed the disc and got it into the hands of DJs within twenty-four hours. That Friday night in New York City, WNEW’s Martin Block, host of the popular Make Believe Ballroom, named “I Love the Guy” the best new recording of the week, and both sides charted during the fall.14
In September, Miller followed a similar formula. He produced a brassy arrangement of “Perdido,” the Duke Ellington standard adopted by Vaughan as her signature tune during the early 1950s, and backed it with the less enduring, more novelty-focused “Whippa-Whippa-Woo” on the B-side. The tide of critical opinion turned again, as Down Beat declared: “Two disappointing sides by a girl who usually never disappoints. Perdido doesn’t swing, has little of Sarah’s usual freshness, indeed gets into banal riffing at points.”15 The mixed responses of jazz critics highlighted an emerging tension between Vaughan and critics who resented her growing profile as a pop, rather than jazz, artist.
Despite the ambivalence of critics, Columbia seemed happy with Vaughan. Two years into her contract, she had proven herself a reliable artist. She consistently garnered praise and airtime from disc jockeys, and her appeal continued to grow. Six of her releases made brief forays onto the Billboard, Cash Box, and Variety charts, three of them that fall.
Then Columbia raised the stakes. In October, more than a year before her original three-year contract expired on January 2, 1952, Columbia exercised Vaughan’s two one-year options. She was now under contract until January 2, 1954. Miller asserted his influence and implemented his strategy for making Vaughan into a star. And it’s likely that the tone of their recording sessions changed as he embraced his brainchild: novelty songs—the same hit-making formula he used with Frankie Laine and would soon use to great success with Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, and Jo Stafford.
On December 6, 1950, Vaughan recorded “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe,” an up-tempo calypso-inspired novelty tune. Backed by a brassy big band and male chorus, Vaughan adopted West Indian–accented English and belted her way through the vaguely Trinidadian tune. Her displeasure is audible, and it’s clear that she did not want to sing the song. The usually perfectionist Vaughan, known for her perfect pitch, sang out of tune. She was out of sync with the band and choir. And, most telling, midway through the song, she stifled a laugh, perhaps of discomfort or defiance, disbelief that she was contractually obliged to sing a tune she found unworthy of her talent. The lyrics were silly, the harmonic language simple, and the faux Trinidadian patter offensive. At its core, “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe” used race, stereotypical representations of Caribbean life, as a novelty device. It was a parody of blackness and antithetical to Vaughan’s career-long desire not to be typecast or pigeonholed because of her race.
“You can’t believe the crap that he had Jo [Stafford] record, tunes like ‘Underneath the Overpass,’ stuff that just died,” recalled Paul Weston, Stafford’s husband and the newly appointed West Coast head of A&R for Columbia. “He would be very persuasive, and the artist didn’t have much choice. They’d say, ‘This is a piece of crap,’ and Mitch would say, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be a hit,’ so they’d do it.”16
Miller was more heavy-handed with Rosemary Clooney. Six months later, on June 6, 1951, she released what would become her first big hit, “Come On-A My House.” Based on an Armenian folk song, its arrangement featured both a jazzy, barrelhouse-style harpsichord and a calypso rhythm. Clooney disliked the tune’s campy, hodgepodge arrangement and cheesy accent. “I don’t think so,” Clooney told Miller. She wanted to record “Tenderly,” the jazz standard popularized by Vaughan, instead. Clooney admired Vaughan and regularly attended Vaughan’s club dates. “Know what I think?” Miller replied. “I think you’ll show up because otherwise you will be fired.”17 Clooney was only twenty-two and unestablished. She did not have the clout or confidence to stand up to Miller. Plus, he was used to getting what he wanted. “I know for a fact that Mitch wanted things his way, and in certain instances, it worked. After he finished recording something, he could call the Sales Department and say, ‘Ship three hundred thousand on consignment.’ I mean, he had that kind of juice,” Clooney explained. “I went along with whatever Mitch wanted to do.”18 Years later, she confessed that whenever she listened to “Come On-A My House,” she could only hear the anger and frustration in her voice.
One can imagine the negotiations between Vaughan and Miller when he presented her with “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe.” Perhaps Vaughan refused to sing the song. Miller was persuasive, then more insistent. But Vaughan could be stubborn. Did he threaten to fire her too? Years later, she confided to friend Robert Richards that she hated her producer at Columbia and the songs he chose for her.19 “After all that I did with ‘Fatha’ Hines and Billy Eckstine, I never was able to understand how the recording people could get those tunes for me,” she told Down Beat’s Arnold Jay Smith in 1977, her frustration obvious. “But they got ’em. They were the kind of tunes you don’t have to go far to get. They are just lying around in piles. A lot of the time the record company owns the tunes or whatever.”20 Miller was known for making minor suggestions to the songwriters bringing him material in exchange for writing credits, which then earned him publishing royalties. Many concluded that this was in fact a form of payback to Miller, a kind of payola, for selecting their tunes.21 While Miller did not have a writing credit on “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe,” his name did appear in the Columbia records listing the contractors—the musicians, copyist, and arrangers—receiving payment for the studio session.22 It seems he had a vested interest in its outcome.
In the end, Vaughan recorded a single take of “De Gas Pipe,” and there really should have been another. (Miller got five takes out of Clooney before he was satisfied with “Come On-A My House.”) Vaughan, however, phoned in her performance, making a joke of the session. It was a kind of musical “I’ll show you”—her way of saying: “You can make me sing this, but you cannot control how I sing it. I will not sing it well.” And her laugh-it-off approach, similar to her response to John Hammond, the white producer who snubbed her at Café Society because she didn’t want to sing the blues, was a more socially acceptable way for Vaughan to channel her anger and frustration. It was probably one of the few options available to her. After all, both she and Clooney were women, and Vaughan was a black woman. Contemporary gender roles, and in the case of Vaughan racial dynamics, dictated that they defer to men. In contrast, Frank Sinatra was more assertive, less compliant. He rejected material, scolded Miller during recording sessions, and stormed out of sessions in disgust. He blamed Miller for his poor sales and faltering career. The escalating tensions between them, culminating with Sinatra’s collaboration with the buxom comic actress Dagmar on “Mama Will Bark,” a novelty tune with actual dogs barking, prompted Sinatra to leave Columbia for Capitol in 1952. But most women didn’t feel comfortable behaving this way. They were used to being polite and deferential. While Vaughan was firm and consistent in her convictions, she was shy, reserved, and, at her core, a nonconfrontational person.
“She was very easy to work with, she was a wonderful artist,” Miller, a master at shaping public perceptions, told Ted Fox in 1986. “Except she was married to the wrong guy then. I forget who her husband was, but he always tried to get the songs of publisher friends recorded. I had to give in to him a couple of times. You know you don’t have the last word if someone goes to bed with your artist at night.”23Any problems he might have had with Vaughan he attributed to her husband and manager George Treadwell who, ironically enough, he accused of working the system using the same tactics that he was notorious for.
Despite its many imperfections, Miller held his ground and released “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe” on January 8, 1951, and he backed it with a full-blown promotional campaign. At the end of December, weeks after Vaughan recorded “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe,” Columbia announced a new, revamped promotion strategy. The label had three lists of disc jockeys: A included six hundred DJs, B five hundred, and C four hundred. In the past, Columbia distributed new records to the jockeys in list A first, and if a record showed promise, the label passed it along to the jockeys on list B, then list C. Under the revised plan, a new release was sent to DJs on all three lists, some 1,500 jockeys, simultaneously. The strategy took full advantage of Columbia’s vast distribution network while harnessing the power and growing influence of disc jockeys. It allowed a new record to receive airtime in both big and small markets, giving it more opportunities to find an audience, its niche. Columbia reserved this treatment for its top four artists, all of them white: Doris Day, Jo Stafford, Sammy Kaye, and Frank Sinatra.24 Vaughan was not included on this list, although she should have been. She was Columbia’s leading African American vocalist, their Nat King Cole, and, more important, her contract guaranteed her a “top artist” promotion schedule. Vaughan’s attorney immediately filed a letter of complaint, and Columbia made the appropriate arrangements for Vaughan to receive their top-star-spinner exploitation too.25
But “De Gas Pipe She’s Leakin’ Joe” and its flip side, “I’ll Know,” were flops. None of the trade publications reviewed the single, and it never gained traction with disc jockeys, even after Columbia ran a full-page ad in Billboard on February 24. In a sense, Vaughan ultimately did prevail. Her next releases faired only slightly better. On January 17, 1951, she recorded a pair of religious songs. The first, Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” sung in English, provided a glimpse into Vaughan, the opera singer. In another homage to Marian Anderson, who recorded the tune in 1936, Vaughan’s singing was plaintive and reflective, her voice full and open, embellished with precise trills and bends that were unmistakable. The more sophisticated, classical orientation of “Ave Maria” was the perfect foil for the primitivism of “De Gas Pipe,” and it’s possible that Vaughan requested “Ave Maria” for the January 17 session. (The recording became a personal favorite and was played at her funeral.) And perhaps Mitch Miller suggested the down-home spiritual “A City Called Heaven,” a reminder of Vaughan’s days in the gospel choir at the Mount Zion Baptist Church, for the B-side. Although she sang it flawlessly, there was nothing uniquely Sarah Vaughan about her interpretation. It could have been sung equally well, or better, by any number of gospel singers. The trade press praised both sides, yet record sales remained underwhelming.
It was becoming clear that Mitch Miller didn’t know how to make a black artist into a pop star, how not to use race (or ethnicity) as a novelty device. He was in tune with white, mainstream America, but he struggled to present the creations of black artists in a way that wasn’t stereotypical or reductive. That said, Vaughan’s Columbia recordings that performed best, those that made brief appearances on the pop charts, incorporated more often than not her distinct vocal inflections. On “I Love the Guy,” which spent seven weeks on the charts, peaking at No. 10, she liberally added vocal turns and twists that became more elaborate as the tune progressed. On “Thinking of You,” which also spent seven weeks on the Billboard charts, she began with a long melisma reminiscent of her opening for “It Might as Well Be Spring” from 1946, and she didn’t stop there, incorporating more vocal shadings and inflections throughout the song. She used similar devices on “I Ran All the Way Home,” which spent fifteen weeks on the Cash Box charts. On “These Things I Offer You,” which spent thirteen weeks on the charts, she expanded the wordless humming and vocal range of Patti Page’s popular cover. And she did the same on “Just a Moment More.” In other words, Vaughan used her voice and trademark inflections to create her own novelty device, one based on her vocal prowess, creative genius, and bebop roots rather than technological gimmicks or simplistic parodies of race and ethnicity. She presented a sophisticated, nuanced version of black artistic expression, one that was unique to her and that she had honed for mainstream audiences.
Novelty songs remained controversial. Detractors worried that Miller focused too much on gimmicks and in-studio production values at the expense of high-quality music. In fact, time and again, Miller unapologetically stated that he did not care about “good” music. “I’m there to please, not to educate,” he told Metronome’s editors.26 He wanted to make money, and according to his critics he was willing to try almost anything to appeal to the masses. The songs Miller produced (he’s considered the first record producer in the modern sense of the word) were unabashedly commercial, musically simple, saccharine ditties that by both past and present standards were catchy but often quite terrible. They did, however, tap into postwar sensibilities, defined by nostalgia coupled with a fascination for technology and innovation, and proved financially lucrative. By the fall of 1951, after just eighteen months at Columbia, Miller had increased the label’s pop record sales by 60 percent, catapulting them from a dismal last place among the four major labels to first. As the 1950s progressed, Miller emerged as a powerhouse at Columbia, wielding unprecedented influence, and he became a celebrity in his own right.27 He hosted radio and television shows, including the popular Sing Along with Mitch on NBC, a spin-off of his album series of the same name.
Miller’s magic didn’t work with Vaughan. After his production-oriented novelty tunes, Columbia returned to their old formula. For the next three years, over the course of seven recording sessions, Vaughan recorded primarily romantic ballads backed by lush studio orchestras sometimes supplemented by a choir. She sang of love found and lost and the joys and trials of unconditional, selfless love. The titles of her releases tell the story: “These Things I Offer You,” “I Ran All the Way Home,” “Out O’ Breath,” “Just a Moment More,” “After Hours” (which she sang in the 1951 motion picture Disc Jockey), “If Someone Had Told Me,” “Say You’ll Wait for Me,” “My Tormented Heart,” “Lover’s Quarrel,” and so on.28 Slow, sentimental, and often schmaltzy, ballads were a mainstay of popular music during the early 1950s. They fulfilled postwar America’s longing for an ideal, simple world, one without violence or the atomic bomb, while reinforcing conventional gender roles disrupted during World War II. They were Vaughan’s specialty, and she sang them beautifully.
But nothing became a breakaway hit. Columbia’s enthusiasm for Vaughan faded, and her visits to their recording studios became more and more infrequent. In 1949, she participated in six sessions, releasing twenty sides. In 1950, five sessions and sixteen sides. In 1951, four sessions and twelve sides. In 1952, three sessions and twelve sides, and in 1953 a single session generating only four sides. Her contract promised that she would record sixteen tunes a year and that at least twelve of these would be released. Columbia was phasing her out. Her final recording date for the label was January 5, 1953, nearly a year before her contract expired, and on October 9, 1953, Columbia canceled her contract, paying out her remaining sessions.
As Vaughan fought for her artistic integrity, to determine how she, a black woman, was represented musically on discs, she also confronted increasingly disapproving jazz critics. The same critics who supported and embraced her early in her career, who held her up as the standard-bearer for modern jazz singing, were turning against her. They deemed her Columbia releases too corny, too saccharine, and too reliant on clichéd string orchestras, and said Vaughan sang them too straight. At first they directed their frustration at Columbia. In response to the straight singing on “Just Friends” and “You Taught Me to Love Again,” released May 8, 1950, Down Beat’s reviewer wrote, “I presume this is the result of the request of Columbia. I could be quite wrong, of course, but since Miss Vaughan made her reputation singing her own way, might it not be a good idea to let her go on in this fashion especially since she happens to sing quite well?”29 He wanted Vaughan’s jazz roots to shine through. Yet when she released jazz sides, like the big band arrangement of “Perdido” or the small combo album Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi, the one with Miles Davis, jazz critics didn’t like those either.
Their disappointment escalated, and in the fall of 1951 Down Beat’s Jack Tracy penned a full-scale indictment of Vaughan and her musical choices, all under the guise of a record review.
This is not an easy review to write. Because I have been among the many who have sat countless times enthralled by Sassy’s marvelous performances. And I happen to have her [Musicraft] records of It Might as Well Be Spring, If You Could See Me Now (see review in reissues section), Don’t Worry ’Bout Me, etc.
But Sarah on this record isn’t the same girl—she’s too coy, too dramatic, too self-confidently glib. Though her voice has ripened and achieved the maturity hinted at earlier, she misuses it terribly.
Miss Vaughan has all the equipment in the world—let’s hope we don’t have to continue to turn to records she made five years ago to hear her at her best when she’s capable of exceeding those performances right now.
End of tirade.30
Tracy’s review of her reissued Musicraft masters praised “Sarah’s unaffected, wonderfully controlled singing contrasting sharply with her present-day output.” He missed the good old days, the spontaneity and naturalness of her early bebop sides. So did Dave Garroway. Six months later, in May 1952, while listening to Vaughan’s duet with Billy Eckstine, “I Love You,” during one of Leonard Feather’s blindfold tests, he lamented that he no longer enjoyed jazz in the same way that he used to.
I admire Sarah very much, admire her great strength when she first came out. So when the new records come out, I know all the sounds. She’s better than she was a year and a half ago, when she was making arpeggios out of chords which is awful hard for a non-musician like me to understand. But all you have to do to know my opinion is to play If You Could See Me Now [from 1946] and take my blood pressure. It would go up.
So here is just the shell of a great talent. Not, I believe a lost talent; I think if they got her out of those sequin gowns and she would let her hair down and have the fun out of music that she had when I first knew her, everything would be fine. I realize this is commercially impractical—the lady would like to make a buck. I’m not doing all the things I want to do, either. But there are people who can make the compromise. Like Louis [Armstrong]. But at least Sarah’s vocal quality, like Ella’s, remains unimpaired.31
Since his days championing Vaughan in Chicago, Garroway had made the leap from radio to television, becoming the cohost of NBC’s national Today Show, where he shared the anchorman’s desk with a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs. While Garroway was more diplomatic and sympathetic to Vaughan’s plight than Tracy, his criticism was the same. The demands of commercialism kept her from being herself. She placed her artistic integrity at risk with these disappointing lapses in judgment. In short, Sarah Vaughan had sold out.
Jazz critics of the 1940s and 1950s, especially those writing in publications like Down Beat and Metronome, were a small contingent of voices that did not represent the tastes of the music industry as a whole. But they were passionate and outspoken. A collection of like-minded, predominantly white men, they dedicated themselves to the noble task of canonizing jazz, elevating it to the status of a respected high art. This was not easy, and many critics became possessive of “their” musicians, especially black musicians they advocated for early on. This included beboppers like Vaughan, Eckstine, Gillespie, and Parker whose more abstract, cerebral, less danceable, experimental music was for them an ideal highbrow art form. Critics believed that musicians, especially black musicians, had a moral obligation to perform (and record) jazz, and that they should remain untarnished by crass commercialism.
Vaughan was not the only artist targeted by jazz critics. They also disapproved of pianist Nat King Cole’s transition from well-respected but underpaid leader of a jazz trio to chart-topping balladeer in the mid-1940s. “For years we did nothing but play for musicians and other ‘hip’ people. We practically starved to death,” explained Cole in 1946. “When we did click, it wasn’t on the strength of the good jazz. . . . We clicked with the pop songs, pretty ballads and novelty stuff. You know that. Wouldn’t we have been crazy if we’d turned right around after getting a break and started playing pure jazz again? We would have lost the crowd right away.”32 And when confronted with the backlash of critics in 1951, as his single “Too Young” topped the charts, Cole retorted, “Critics don’t buy records—they get ’em free.”33 When Billy Eckstine dissolved his bebop big band in 1947 to pursue a career as a solo act, the jazz press lampooned him for neglecting his African American roots and fans. He too crooned smooth, romantic ballads, nearly surpassing a faltering Frank Sinatra’s popularity in 1950. “Some creeps said I ‘forsook’ jazz in order to be commercial,” Eckstine exclaimed in frustration. “So I saw one of those creeps, a jazz critic, and I said, ‘What are you, mad at me because I want to take care of my family? Is that what pisses you off? You want me to wind up in a goddamn hotel room with a bottle of gin in my pocket and a needle in my arm, and let them discover me laying there? Then I’ll be an immortal, I guess, to you.’”34 Eckstine understood the role white critics wanted him to play and how it fulfilled their emotional investment in an idealized artistic purity; the archetype of the tragic genius, here epitomized by artists like the heroin-addicted Charlie Parker; and, ultimately, racial authenticity. Vaughan understood this too. But she was less outspoken and more diplomatic in her dealings with critics.
“I don’t pay them any mind,” she explained to Down Beat’s Nat Hentoff in 1952. “They have a right to say what they think, but I always sing the best way I know how.”35 In the article, aptly titled “Sarah’s Answer to the Critics,” Vaughan outlined what would become the guiding principles for her career. “There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being commercial,” she continued, “but there’s a point beyond which you can’t go without being ridiculous. People with genuine talent are lowering themselves by continuing to use some of the material that passes for popular songs these days. I just can’t. There are some tunes I just won’t do.” It was a statement of musical integrity and independence, a veiled indictment of the likes of Mitch Miller. She confessed, however, that she’d never made a record, jazz or pop, exactly as she wanted to. And while she was committed to improvising, especially in nightclubs, she understood that audiences in supper clubs and big theaters did not appreciate improvisation, and for them she sang straighter. Vaughan was unwilling to concede to either ideological extreme, the blatant commercialism of Miller or the anti-commercialism of jazz purists, and sought a middle ground. This gave her the freedom and flexibility to pursue her own musical path—one that privileged the music. “Look, what I want to put over to audiences is music,” she concluded. “If I don’t then to me, I’m a failure. So music is always more important to me than getting with each new hit.”36
In their fervor to condemn her pop records for Columbia and the growing commercial appeal that they symbolized, jazz critics neglected her live performances. They overlooked what she did night after night, for hundreds and often thousands of listeners. Here, while performing live, she reconciled the competing demands of jazz and pop. She honed her style, incorporating elements from both. During the early 1950s, Vaughan figured out how to be a successful crossover artist on her own terms. She decided what she would and would not do, and how she would represent herself and her race.