Having my first smash pop hit gives me a wonderful feeling,” Vaughan told a packed house at Birdland in December 1954.1 She’d recently returned from another successful tour of Europe, her second. This time she added sold-out engagements in Berlin to her stops in Paris, where she appeared at the famed Salle Pleyel on October 11. A tour of the United Kingdom, culminating with a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall on October 24, followed. But before she left New York, Vaughan stepped into Mercury’s studios to record “Make Yourself Comfortable” on September 24. Released at the end of October in anticipation of her return home, the single, backed by “Idle Gossip” on the B-side, was selling spectacularly well. By mid-November, just two weeks after its release, “Make Yourself Comfortable” had garnered “unusually enthusiastic sales reports” throughout New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and the Midwest, Billboard reported.2 A week later, it appeared on Variety’s list of “Retail Disk Best Sellers,” breaking through at No. 25.3 Five weeks in, during her three weeks at Birdland, it had sold 250,000 copies, and the black press predicted Vaughan was well on her way to “the pot of gold every pop artist hopes for—a record selling a million copies.”4
This success had been a long time coming. She hadn’t had a strong seller since “These Things I Offer You” in the spring of 1951, and its sales paled in comparison to those of “Make Yourself Comfortable.” Although making hits was not her top priority, Vaughan understood the value of a successful pop single. “I have more fans now than ever in my life,” she told her old friend and advocate Dave Garroway days earlier during an appearance on his national radio show, Friday with Garroway. When asked if her new fans understood her jazz sides, Vaughan was diplomatic. “Well, I think they do. But the commercial tunes are taking over. That is the thing now,” she said. “Your old albums are still selling well,” Garroway countered. “But [they] do not reach the masses,” she explained.5
A year earlier, in October 1953, after Columbia canceled her contract, Vaughan signed a dual contract with Mercury. She would record pop on the parent label, Mercury, and jazz on EmArcy, their soon to be established jazz subsidiary. She no longer had to compromise. Vaughan could now split her talent in two and experience the best of both worlds: fame and fortune as a pop starlet and the creative freedom of a jazz artist. It was an unprecedented contract. No musician, white or black, had been granted anything like it before. And while it was an artistically satisfying arrangement, it was financially underwhelming. Her new contract did not include a guarantee. Her earnings would rely solely upon royalties from record sales.
The contract went into effect on January 1, 1954, and just as had happened five years earlier with Columbia, Mercury’s executives rushed Vaughan into their studios. Weeks later, they issued a single pairing, “Easy Come, Easy Go Lover” with “And This Is My Beloved,” followed in February by “Come Along with Me” and “It’s Easy to Remember” on the B-side. The sides followed a familiar formula. All were backed by a sweeping, dramatic string orchestra, and, with the exception of the up-tempo “Come Along with Me,” they were slow romantic ballads, Vaughan’s specialty. She sang beautifully, taking full advantage of her lower range, deep register, full vibrato, and pure tone, but the discs were otherwise unremarkable and far too similar to her Columbia output. And like her Columbia sides, they didn’t sell. In May, Mercury departed from the Columbia playbook and released two jazz sides of Vaughan backed by her trio, “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” and the scat-heavy “Shulie a Bop.” In July they mixed it up again with a brassy, swinging disc of “Old Devil Moon,” reminiscent of her popular Columbia recording of “Perdido,” and “Saturday,” another crooning ballad. But there was still no significant traction with disc jockeys and record buyers.
Industry insiders understood that Vaughan, and by extension Mercury, needed to end her dry spell and score a big pop hit. The fate of Mercury’s new jazz subsidiary depended on it. “Perhaps one reason that Miss Vaughan has failed to come up with a hit recently is that she is bucking the trend to complete simplicity in vocal projection,” Variety’s Herm Schoenfeld speculated.6 Her most commercial releases for Mercury were still too esoteric for the pop market, and like Columbia before them, Mercury hadn’t figured out how to make their newest acquisition into a pop star. Insiders knew that Vaughan had the talent—was in fact one of the most gifted musicians in the business—but her singing was still too stylized, not quite in sync with the popular tastes of the day. She was at risk of becoming permanently relegated to the jazz sidelines.
Make Yourself Comfortable” cracked the code. “I am crazy about that,” Vaughan told Dave Garroway during her appearance on his show in December. “It is a little commercial tune. It is a real cute tune. I like it.”7 Publicly she promoted the record, which just hit No. 13 on the Billboard charts, but privately she did not like it. Her road manager Johnnie Garry remembered when Bobby Shad of Mercury gave her “Make Yourself Comfortable” during the recording session. “I’m not going to sing that tune,” Vaughan said. “You’ve got to sing it. We have a contract here,” Treadwell reminded her.8 It is easy to understand why Vaughan found “Make Yourself Comfortable” uninspiring. It was harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically simple. Written by Bob Merrill, the mastermind behind Patti Page’s 1953 megahit “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,” “Comfortable” was yet another trendy novelty tune. And given the unpleasant experiences with Mitch Miller and his novelty tunes while at Columbia, Vaughan probably dreaded the session. She sang straight as she told the story of a couple rushing home from a date to smooch. Her interpretation was provocative and filled with innuendo, yet sweet and wholesome at the same time. And like “Doggie,” it incorporated a generous helping of overdubbing and echo chambers, technological gimmicks that transformed this otherwise saccharine, rather pedestrian tune into something new and decidedly modern. It was catchy, and Vaughan’s voice sounded phenomenal.
According to the Chicago Defender, when Mercury’s vice president, Art Talmadge, heard the masters for “Make Yourself Comfortable,” he immediately ordered an initial pressing of five hundred thousand discs.9 Full-page ad buys in the leading trade publications followed, and Mercury distributed the disc widely. Both Billboard and Variety named Vaughan’s “Make Yourself Comfortable” a “Best Bet” and published positive reviews, praising not only Vaughan’s performance but also the tune’s commercial appeal and potential to become a hit. Disc jockeys soon placed the single in heavy rotation.
Sales of Vaughan’s “Make Yourself Comfortable” built momentum throughout the winter and continued into early spring, performing well on the Billboard, Variety, and Cash Box charts. Her recording outpaced all other covers, including Columbia’s by Peggy King, which placed a distant second, and its success spawned additional covers. Television personalities Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, future husband and wife, released a charming duet that capitalized on their familiar, affectionate banter. In February, comedian Andy Griffith issued a less charming, more cynical (and sexist) cover for Capitol. He portrayed a man scorned by a scheming, manipulative woman. And most curiously, Eileen Scott, a relatively unknown white singer, released an identical, albeit clumsy and less technologically sophisticated knock-off of Vaughan’s arrangement for Gateway, an obscure budget label specializing in covers of hit records. Vaughan’s version, however, prevailed and became her biggest seller to date.
In January, as “Make Yourself Comfortable” peaked on the charts, Mercury released a new disc pairing “How Important Can It Be,” another romantic ballad, with “Waltzing Down the Aisle,” a tongue-in-cheek waltz. Hits beget hits, and the trade press predicted that Vaughan’s cover would sell well but face stiff competition from newcomer Joni James, a conventionally beautiful brunette, on MGM and veteran swing stylist Connee Boswell on Decca. Vaughan performed “How Important Can It Be” on variety shows, including Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town.10 Mercury sponsored a contest asking DJs to sing along with Vaughan’s recording on air. The DJ who received the most requests for his sing-along duo won. Bob Dun of KLX in Oakland, California, came in first, followed by Hugh Johnson of WBBW in Youngstown, Ohio, and Ray Wright of KGCX in Williston, North Dakota.11 In the end, Joni James’s cover prevailed, but Vaughan’s “How Important Can It Be” still performed well, eventually selling five hundred thousand copies.
With “Make Yourself Comfortable” and “How Important Can It Be,” Mercury relaunched Vaughan as a pop artist. Her first four sides as the “new,” more commercial Vaughan told a story of an all-American girl in search of a husband. In “Comfortable,” she explored the thrills of a new romance, while its B-side contemplated the “Idle Gossip” that accompanies a new affair. Vaughan explained that this time the gossip was true because she had finally found her true love. Her next release asked “How Important Can It Be” that she had kissed other lips and concluded with Vaughan happily “Waltzing Down the Aisle.” It was a story line in harmony with contemporary gender roles and sexual mores, and it matched Vaughan’s public persona of domestic femininity. Much like a serial novel or film typical of 1950s movie culture, each release ushered in a new stage of Vaughan’s hypothetical relationship, and her listeners were there each step of the way. Vaughan sang of universal experiences, her fears, desires, and aspirations—much like one friend confiding to another—and in the process cultivated an emotional intimacy and bond with her listeners. She had always accomplished this with her jazz singing. She was, after all, a skilled, emotionally engaging performer. But now a larger, mainstream, and primarily white audience experienced it too. Her fans, both men and women, black and white, got to know and identify with Vaughan and could imagine themselves as part of her story.
After Vaughan’s girl-next-door-in-search-of-a-husband story line finished, her pop persona embraced a new character: that of the bold, sexy temptress. On March 17, as the popularity of “Make Yourself Comfortable” waned, executives at Mercury rushed Vaughan into their studios to record “Whatever Lola Wants,” a tale of seduction set to a catchy flamenco. Industry insiders predicted that “Lola,” written by current wunderkinds Jerry Ross and Richard Adler for the upcoming musical Damn Yankees, would become a big hit, and record labels, both large and small, wanted to get in on the game. At least six artists recorded “Lola” in early 1955: Vaughan for Mercury, along with Dinah Shore for RCA Victor, Carmen McRae for Decca, Ginny Gibson for MGM, Jamie of the Mello Larks for Epic, and the Hi-Los for Starlight. The publisher, Frank Music, promised RCA that Dinah Shore could debut the tune on a nationally televised all-star spectacular broadcast by NBC on Sunday, March 27, the night before record stores began selling her disc. Other labels would have to wait to play, and thus promote, their covers. But Frank Music had changed the clearance date for “Lola” several times, and confusion reigned. Mercury jumped the gun, and DJs throughout the country began spinning Vaughan’s “Lola” on Tuesday, March 22, just five days after she recorded the tune but also five days before Shore’s big NBC premiere. ASCAP stepped in, and Mercury retreated. On Friday, in a show of good faith, the label wired forty prominent DJs requesting that they stop playing Vaughan’s “Lola” until after Shore’s national telecast. They sent similar postcard messages to another two thousand disc jockeys, but few thought the message would arrive in time. Meanwhile, Mercury happily announced that Vaughan’s cover would also be available in stores on Monday, March 28.12
The race was on. Reviewers liked Vaughan’s cover but predicted stiff competition from Shore and Carmen McRae, a relative newcomer to the pop field. Each artist crafted engaging, masterful performances. Carmen McRae’s “Lola” is delivered flawlessly, but it is almost cold in its precision—every word perfectly articulated and every note hit precisely on the head. Her voice is crisp, light, and fresh. McRae, a jazz vocalist and pianist by training, sings straight, and her approach is very matter of fact. Shore’s interpretation is more sumptuous. She also sings relatively straight but incorporates a deep, full vibrato, microtonal inflections, and vocal slides throughout. In many respects, Shore’s interpretation is very Vaughan-esque. Yet unlike the modernity so often associated with Vaughan’s singing, Shore’s interpretation sounds old-fashioned, overwrought, and almost too mannered. Shore sounds like a nice girl playing sexy, rather than the real thing.
In contrast, Vaughan embodies her role as the seductress. Her Lola exudes confidence. Her voice is full and deep, yet buoyant and never breathy; open and inviting; sensual and provocative, but never coy or lewd. It’s feminine and subtle without becoming a parody of womanhood or female sexuality. On the surface, Vaughan sings straight, but in fact she infuses her performance with sophisticated vocal inflections and nuances. She teases with the larger rhythmic and harmonic language, which includes a challenging, exotic-sounding Phrygian mode in the bridge, to create a give-and-take that pulls the listener through each verse. And with each new verse, she adds another layer of vocal complexity to build momentum and intensity. Unlike Shore, who must shorten and lengthen notes, slow down and speed up to accommodate her vocal dramatics, Vaughan always keeps a strict beat. Yet she creates the impression of uncertainty and spontaneity, constantly pushing the boundaries between control and loss of control to produce a delightful tension between the two. From a musical standpoint, Vaughan deftly re-creates the dynamics of any successful seduction. By the time she reaches the final refrain and proclaims “I’m irresistible, you fool / Give in, give in, give in,” her success, and the success of her disc, seems a foregone conclusion.
Vaughan’s “Lola” is a pop masterpiece. In less than three minutes, she captured the persona of Lola—her motivations and desires—perfectly. In a sense, she became Lola, and she did so in a way that epitomized the ethos of the moment. Unlike Shore’s old-fashioned, almost stodgy “Lola,” Vaughan’s “Lola” is modern and hip, free and easy. It’s a brilliant performance. It melded her vocal prowess and technical mastery of music—honed during her years as a jazz artist—with her savvy as a storyteller and interpreter of lyrics.
At last, her skill set and the demands of the pop market intersected. Vaughan’s cover became the biggest seller of the three, in spite of Dinah Shore’s nationally televised debut. It performed well on the industry charts, peaking at No. 6 on both the Variety and Billboard rankings, and remained popular throughout the summer. It became an unexpected hit in Morocco. According to international jukebox reports, Vaughan’s “Lola” was the most frequently played disc of the spring and summer in Casablanca.13 Her “Lola” buoyed sales of a compilation album featuring other Mercury artists singing tunes from Damn Yankees.14 Although a lone DJ in Los Angeles banned all versions of the tune sung by women, because they were too provocative, Vaughan’s single went on to sell eight hundred thousand copies.15
As summer became fall, Mercury continued its strategic release of novelty-driven pop singles that continued to demonstrate Vaughan’s flexibility and range. In June, the label issued “Experience Unnecessary,” another teasing yet provocative tune, this time with a trendy rhythm and blues influence, backed by “Slowly with Feeling,” a more earnest, romantic waltz. “Johnny Be Smart” and “Hey, Naughty Papa,” two more R & B–style tunes, followed in September. And a disc pairing “C’est La Vie” and “Never,” both ballads, appeared at the end of October. While none of these were runaway hits like “Make Yourself Comfortable” or “Lola,” they sold well, and Vaughan finished the year strong.
In October, Vaughan was ranked the third-most-played female vocalist in the country, behind Georgia Gibbs and Jaye P. Morgan, in Billboard’s 1955 Disc Jockey Poll.16 This momentum spilled into 1956. Her first release of the New Year, the highly anticipated “Mr. Wonderful” from Sammy Davis, Jr.’s upcoming musical of that name, received top exposure from disc jockeys and outpaced much of its competition. And her EmArcy album with tenor saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Sarah Vaughan in the Land of Hi-Fi, a centerpiece of the marketing campaign for the label’s new Land of Hi-Fi series, appeared on Billboard’s charts of bestselling jazz albums and, perhaps more tellingly, bestselling pop vocal albums too.17
Vaughan was in top form, in both the pop and jazz fields, and Mercury rewarded her. In May 1956, seven months before her original contract expired, Mercury cofounder Art Talmadge re-signed Vaughan for another four years. The deal was retroactive to April and, according to trade publications, promised her $500,000 over four years, a dramatic contrast to her original 1954 deal without a guarantee. Though the financial details of her new contract cannot be confirmed, it was a substantial, news-making renegotiation and cited as one in a series of unprecedented deals between the major record labels and their top female stars.18 Three weeks earlier, Columbia, in a deal described as “one of the costliest contracts” in recording history, re-signed Jo Stafford for five years at $500,000.19 In full-page ads, Columbia touted Stafford’s international appeal and sales of more than thirty-three million discs during her five-and-a-half-year tenure at the label. A week after that, Columbia, following months of negotiations, finalized a new contract with Doris Day for an astronomical $1,050,000 over five years.20 Day was Columbia’s biggest female star. In 1954 and 1955, disc jockeys voted her their favorite girl singer in Billboard’s annual polls (Vaughan came in twelfth in 1954 and ninth in 1955); Down Beat’s poll of musicians, composers, and directors designated her the “top musical personality” of 1956. In 1956 Day also scored her sixth million-selling single with “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera).” She was also a major movie star and consistent top box office earner.21
Vaughan was not in the same league as Doris Day (or, for that matter, Jo Stafford). Vaughan simply did not have the same film, television, and radio platform as Day; few did. Nor did she epitomize the blond, blue-eyed ideal of the American girl next door that Day, often dubbed the “professional virgin,” portrayed in both her films and music. Vaughan couldn’t. But her new contract for Mercury, with its reported $125,000-a-year guarantee, was still a significant milestone for Vaughan. It solidified her position as an influential power player in the music industry. Vaughan, with her dual contract, had become a cornerstone of Mercury’s business model. Her flexibility, vocal mastery, and fresh sound solidified their pop sales, while her expanding appeal, phenomenal technique, and longstanding credentials as a jazz artist were crucial for launching their new jazz label, EmArcy—a source of prestige and, eventually, financial gain for Mercury. Perhaps most important, however, with this deal Vaughan became an African American woman on equal footing, at least financially, with many of her white contemporaries. It was a turning point of sorts for Vaughan and black performers, especially black women.
Mercury treated Vaughan differently than many labels had treated their black talent in the past. In addition to the big paycheck, the unprecedented dual contract, and the creative freedom they represented, Mercury did a better job of selecting tunes for Vaughan than Columbia had. Time and again, reviews of Vaughan’s pop releases for Mercury commented on the quality of the material she sang. Her new singles featured, according to Down Beat, “some of the best songs written in the last couple of years.” In their review of “How Important Can It Be” and “Waltzing Down the Aisle” Down Beat critics proclaimed, “Mercury is doing an A-1 job of finding songs for Sarah to sing that utilize her wonderful vocal equipment in a commercial manner, yet won’t offend the fans who remember when.”22 And Billboard described “Make Yourself Comfortable” as an “out-of-the-ordinary piece of material by writer Bob Merrill,” concluding that the “first-rate, light novelty material gives her a chance to get moving in the pop market. Watch this one; it has a chance.”23
It seems logical; if you give artists strong material, they will make better records that are more likely to sell well and become hits. Yet this was not always the case for black artists. When Nat Hentoff asked Ella Fitzgerald in February 1955 why she never recorded “hot” pop material for her label, Decca, a frustrated Fitzgerald responded: “I don’t know myself. Yet I never do get a chance at the songs that have a chance. They give me something by somebody that no one else has, and then they wonder why the record doesn’t sell. I’m so heart-broken over it.”24 For years, jazz publications lamented the shortage of “quality” songs and the tendency for record producers to relegate their second-, often third-rate leftovers to critically acclaimed, predominantly black, performers like Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Louis Armstrong, and also Vaughan during her years at Columbia. Instead labels reserved the best material for their white, and in many cases, less talented, performers.
Mercury, however, treated Vaughan more like her white counterparts, especially in the early years of their partnership. They realized it was in everybody’s best interest to give Vaughan every chance to compete with her white contemporaries. They wanted hits and gave her strong material—tunes with industry buzz, like “Whatever Lola Wants,” and material penned by songwriters with a proven track record, like “Make Yourself Comfortable” by Bob Merrill. Mercury threw Vaughan, often the only black artist covering the song, into the ring with tough competition and then worked to aggressively position her in the market and optimize her exposure, and sometimes they played dirty. The publishers for “Mr. Wonderful,” for instance, set a February 1, 1956, clearance date before which covers were not to be released. But, as with “Whatever Lola Wants,” Mercury didn’t wait. The label leaked the disc to DJs in select markets almost a month early, on January 6. RCA learned of Mercury’s plans and rushed Teddi King’s disc to DJs for play beginning January 5.25 When coupled with robust print ads, merchandising campaigns, and carefully timed television appearances, Mercury gave Vaughan a chance at pop success.
Songs with a chance were novelty-driven and used the same techniques developed by Mitch Miller. In 1955, technological gimmicks were still fashionable, as were “ethnic” or vernacular sounds and styles, now with an emphasis on Latin-inspired dances, rhythm and blues, and country and western. That year Rosemary Clooney’s “This Ole House,” Bill Haley’s “Shake Rattle and Roll,” and Vaughan Monroe’s “They Were Doin’ the Mambo” all performed well.26 In each case, white artists shifted musical identities—their subject positions—by assuming a variety of nationalities, ethnicities, and races. They temporarily entered these other “worlds,” shared them with their intrigued listeners, and then returned to their privileged white existences. Black performers were rarely granted this performative flexibility. More often than not, their performances were limited to musical expressions of blackness, be it the blues, gospel or spirituals, or jazz. Pop music historian David Bracket has found that recordings by African Americans that incorporated elements of vernacular blackness, like the sounds of vaudeville and minstrelsy, crossed over onto the pop charts more consistently than those that did not.27 In other words, for black artists, race functioned as the novelty device of choice. And this is the strategy that Miller used with Vaughan at Columbia.
Here, too, Mercury tried something different. During her success streak beginning at the end of 1954 and extending into early 1956, Vaughan’s pop releases featured a diverse collection of soundscapes and musical codes. In addition to “Whatever Lola Wants,” she sang other Latin-infused singles like “Johnny Be Smart,” “Never,” and “The Bashful Matador.” She sang more traditional, jingle-like waltzes too: “Waltzing Down the Aisle,” along with “Slowly with Feeling” and “It Happened Again.” When R & B–style pop tunes were all the rage, in the summer and fall of 1955, she released “Hey Naughty Papa.” These were not blues in the style of fellow Mercury artist Dinah Washington, the Queen of the Blues, but rather of Georgia Gibbs, a white vocalist, also on Mercury, who had scored hits with her covers of La Vern Baker’s “Tweedle Dee” and Etta James’s “The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry).” Throughout it all Vaughan continued to record romantic ballads and standards backed by lush string orchestras, ensembles still associated with white cultural institutions. But these were released as pop albums, not novelty-driven singles. And she simultaneously recorded jazz for EmArcy. Even though Vaughan didn’t like many of the pop tunes she recorded, they were an impressive display of her artistic range and flexibility, a testament to her skill as an artist. Through her recordings, Vaughan demonstrated to mainstream America, again primarily white, that a black voice could sound many ways and sing many different styles. She demonstrated that performances by black artists, just like those of their white contemporaries, were indeed performances. They were not set or fixed expressions of an essential racial identity. Black performers need not, and in fact should not, be typecast and restricted to a single style or vocal type.
In her pop songs for Mercury, Vaughan assumed many roles. Her performances did not conform to the stereotypes typically associated with black womanhood, those perpetuated in classic movies like Gone with the Wind and Cabin in the Sky. In her music, Vaughan was not a maid or mammy, a naive girl or a loose woman. Rather, she portrayed an all-American sweetheart in one song, a jilted lover in another, a devoted housewife in yet others, and a sultry seductress in the still popular “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets.” With this collection of roles, as performed in her pop music for Mercury, Vaughan presented the many sides of a woman while displaying a humanity, emotional depth, and complexity so often denied black women by the popular imagination. This was huge.
A closer look at Vaughan’s first smash hit, “Make Yourself Comfortable,” demonstrates how she accomplished this. Unlike many records from this period, “Comfortable” did not rely on unusual regional or vernacular sounds for its hook. Instead, it incorporated new technologies—echo chambers and generous helpings of overdubbing, the layering of voices using multitrack tape, techniques often associated with white performers like Patti Page or Les Paul and Mary Ford. “Comfortable” is an otherwise simple, formulaic tune: it has two straightforward, easily hummable melodic ideas that alternate AABA, a basic harmonic language, and an equally clear-cut rhythmic language. So what makes Vaughan’s cover interesting, and ultimately a catchy earworm, are the various manipulations and permutations of her voice created by technology and the way these multiple voices of Vaughan complement and interact with one another. There are three contrasting “types” or “combinations” of her voice, and each produces a different sound world with a distinct texture, timbre, and mood.
The recording begins with a choir of effervescent-voiced Sarah Vaughans singing in “head” voices that have been altered by an echo chamber. Enhanced by the reverberations of the echo chamber, her voice, or rather voices, sound smooth, light, and airy. They are disembodied as she sings the tune’s refrain, “Ooh, ooh, make yourself comfortable,” on a dominant prolongation, a harmonic holding pattern of sorts that eases listeners into the performance while creating anticipation for Vaughan’s big entrance. Then a full-voiced, solo Vaughan, still accompanied by her choir, begins the song in earnest. Singing in a “chest” voice, she invites her beau in after a date, turns on the record player, and takes the phone off the hook so that no one can intrude. In comparison to the introductory choir, here her tone is fuller and deeper, and within the context of this recording the solo voice seems more grounded. In the contrasting B section, or bridge, the choir drops out and a second grounded voice joins the first. Together the two Vaughans harmonize and blend with one another as the pair asks the hypothetical boyfriend why they hurried through dinner and dancing and left before their movie finished. To make time for smooching, of course. The opening A-section material returns, again with the solo Vaughan accompanied by her choir, as she instructs her date to take off his shoes and loosen his tie. The couple kisses and turns down the lights. The performance concludes with one last statement of the refrain. Now unaccompanied, Vaughan’s voice becomes thicker and heavier with a touch of throaty rumble as she slowly sings “Make yourself comfortable” followed by a breathy “baby,” which is manipulated and extended using an echo chamber.
Vaughan’s “Make Yourself Comfortable” used technology to play with the contemporary vocal codes often associated with black and white voices. She sang the final “baby” of the tune in a voice reminiscent of many of her blues contemporaries, a timbre many white audiences still associated with blackness and embodied performances. But technology transformed this grounded voice into an ungrounded voice separated from the body that created it. It became disembodied. Because of Vaughan’s access to the extensive technological resources of Mercury, itself a by-product of her status in the industry at that time, she was able to play with and ultimately reconfigure existing racial vocal codes in the space of a single recording. In other words, although “Make Yourself Comfortable” was a cheesy, schmaltzy tune, especially to our twenty-first-century ears, it was also subversive, pushing back against the accepted norms of the day.
The overdubbing and the layering of voices using multitrack tape in “Make Yourself Comfortable” also explored how technology could change the way audiences sonically perceived a person’s individuality and identity. Patti Page popularized the technique with “Confess” in 1948, followed by other hits including “With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming” in 1950, the oft-cited and maligned “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window” in 1953, and “Cross Over the Bridge” in 1954. In a nod to the technological manipulations of Page’s voice—the use of overdubbing—when crediting the artists on the disc, producers listed the vocalists as “Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page.” The Billboard and Variety charts referred to the Patti Page Trio, Quartet, or Quintet, as appropriate. On these tunes Page often sang in close harmony with herself, with each “Patti Page” assuming a distinct vocal role, much like the individual singers in popular vocal quartets like the Chordettes, whose cover of “Mr. Sandman” topped the charts in 1954. With the help of technology, Page was able to magnify and multiply herself. Each track of Page’s voice represented a unique subject, and by layering the voices one could hear the many sides of a person—the complexities and parts that make up the whole. When applied to an African American performer, so often perceived as a stereotype, the use of overdubbing shattered longstanding preconceptions and assumptions. As with Page in her many overdubbed hits, in “Make Yourself Comfortable” listeners could hear multiple voices of Vaughan simultaneously. She demonstrated that black women were not flat or one-dimensional and that a single black voice could sound multifaceted and complex. The same technology also helped shift the cultural space occupied by black female voices in the white imagination. Instead of the primitivism still associated with the blues, and by extension many black voices, Vaughan’s voice, especially on tunes like “Make Yourself Comfortable,” became associated with the latest technology and innovation. Hers became a voice of modernity, and this was groundbreaking, especially for a black woman.
At the same time, songs like “Make Yourself Comfortable” and “How Important Can It Be” embraced the ethos of the moment. They paired technology with nostalgia to become both sonic and textual realizations of postwar American ideals and values. Americans nostalgically embraced distinct gender roles as women abandoned their wartime jobs in order to become professional homemakers, and men once again became the primary breadwinners. In the process they fortified the institutions of both the family and home, which, it was believed, countered the communist threat from abroad. “Make Yourself Comfortable” is about both the home and conventional gender roles. From a purely textual point of view, the lyrics told the story of a woman welcoming a young man into her home using the common greeting “Make yourself comfortable.” And the larger narrative initiated by the release of this single, which related the experiences of a woman in search of a husband, reflected postwar views on domesticity and the acceptable role of women, a role reinforced by Vaughan’s own public image, honed by her husband Treadwell, as a devoted wife skilled in the domestic arts. As historian Elaine Tyler May has explored in her study of family life during the Cold War, when confronted by the horrors of World War II and the uncertainties of the Atomic Age, Americans sought security and stability in the modern suburban home.28 Household appliances, and the consumerism that they represented, played a central role in this process. By making modern homes comfortable and secure, appliances like fully automated washing machines, vacuum cleaners, toasters, and hand-held mixers, as well as hi-fi stereo systems and televisions, came to symbolize the benefits of technology in the Atomic Age. May explains that “science and technology seemed to have invaded virtually every aspect of life, from the most public to the most private.”29 The extensive invocations of technology in “Make Yourself Comfortable,” not to mention the subject matter of its lyrics, epitomized these postwar ideals. With the release of “Make Yourself Comfortable” and its successors, Vaughan and her voice invaded the home and became a part of the postwar American suburban life and mind-set.
At the height of the song’s popularity, the black press claimed that “Make Yourself Comfortable” received “thousands of spins daily from disc jockeys.”30 It was a bold, if perhaps exaggerated, statement, and it evoked powerful imagery. Americans, both black and white, heard Vaughan and her voice as they drove in their cars, relaxed in the privacy of their living rooms, or cooked dinner in their kitchens. A 1956 review for Vaughan’s “The Other Woman” concluded, “Daytime spinners should have a ball with this one. It’s a natural lead-in for human-interest chatter aimed at the long-suffering housewife. The canary sings with rich intensity on an unusual ballad, with imaginative lyrics.”31 Vaughan had become an ally and confidant of sorts, another household fixture. Her voice emanated from jukeboxes as Americans ate at the local diner or socialized in restaurants and country clubs. They overheard her singing while shopping at the neighborhood grocery store. And in 1956, patrons of the Grand Union grocery store chain could purchase Sarah and Dizzy, an album of reissues from her youthful bebop days. It was one of the few jazz offerings in a new line of bargain hi-fi albums, featuring primarily classical music, sold in the chain’s 344 stores throughout the Northeast.32 During the 1950s, Vaughan’s voice became a part of daily life for both black and white Americans. Her voice became a part of the American soundtrack.
Vaughan, along with her African American contemporaries like Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald, integrated the airwaves, initiating a kind of sonic desegregation at a time when the United States was still deeply divided along racial lines. Black Americans encountered the blatant Jim Crow of the South, but also the more subtle yet insidious racism of the North. In the postwar years, as whites fled the diversity of urban centers for the suburbs, often with the help of federal home loans, they actively resisted integration. The majority of white Americans did not want black neighbors. Housing developers and neighborhood improvement associations enacted restrictive housing covenants that forbade homeowners from selling their properties to blacks; realtors and financial institutions told their agents and lenders not to help blacks wanting to buy properties in white neighborhoods; and local governments enacted restrictive zoning laws that maintained segregation.33
When black families did move into white neighborhoods, they encountered fierce opposition, and often violence. In 1948, Nat King Cole purchased a home in the affluent, exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park. The Hancock Park Property Owners Association held emergency meetings to stop Cole’s family from moving in. They tried to buy back the house from Cole, offering him an additional $25,000 over the $75,000 purchase price. “How would YOU like it if you had to come out of your home and see a Negro walking down the street wearing a big wide hat, a zoot suit, long chain and yellow shoes?” association members reportedly asked Cole’s white manager, Carlos Gastel.34 Nat King Cole, of course, did not wear zoot suits. He wore immaculately tailored suits, crisp white shirts, and slim black ties. He cultivated an image of polished elegance, sophistication, and respectability, which members of the property association discovered during a meeting with Cole and his wife, Maria. “There it was patiently explained to my husband that the good people of Hancock Park simply did not want any undesirables moving in,” Maria wrote in her memoir. Cole replied, “Neither do I. And if I see anybody undesirable coming in here, I’ll be the first to complain.”35 Cole, his wife, and two daughters moved in in August 1948. White residents placed a sign on the Coles’ lawn that read “Nigger Heaven,” and later Cole’s daughter Carol remembered someone burning the word “nigger” into their front lawn.36
In 1953, baseball legend Jackie Robinson and his wife struggled to purchase a home in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York. During their search, showings were canceled, offers rejected, asking prices suddenly raised, and properties mysteriously sold to other families—anything to keep a black family from moving into the neighborhood. Fellow baseball great Willie Mays encountered resistance when he wanted to purchase a home in San Francisco in 1957. And racial violence greeted countless black families across the country when they tried to relocate to white neighborhoods. Local police barred entrances. Protestors bombed homes and destroyed personal property. Riots, often involving thousands, erupted in Cicero, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; and Levittown, Pennsylvania, requiring the National Guard to step in to restore order.
In 1968, in the wake of the riots in urban centers across the country the previous summer, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, better known as the Fair Housing Act, into law. Residential segregation and discrimination were now illegal. Fifteen years earlier the NAACP had proclaimed housing segregation the central issue in the larger fight against segregation. In the 1950s and 1960s, the attitudes of white Americans gradually began to shift. Many became embarrassed by racial intolerance and the violence so often associated with it, especially how it was perceived abroad. Many white Americans began to see black Americans differently, as potential neighbors.
Musicians like Sarah Vaughan were helping to shift their perceptions. With her singing, she demonstrated the humanity, complexity, and subjectivity of black women. Black women had the same depth of feeling, the same hopes and dreams as everybody else. They knew of the excitement of a new romance, the thrill of a seduction, and the pain of a broken heart. Vaughan had an uncanny ability to sing with an emotional intensity, and her performances prompted strong, visceral responses from her listeners that encouraged feelings of intimacy, closeness, and often empathy. Along the way, she changed how white Americans heard, understood, and interacted with the black female voice. When songs like “Make Yourself Comfortable,” often dismissed as inconsequential commercial fluff by jazz purists, entered contested spaces like the home and suburbia, by way of radios, record players, and television sets, Vaughan broke down barriers. As fans ventured to her concerts, she brought different kinds of people together who may not have otherwise met. Her singing, along with that of many of her contemporaries, helped set the stage for the advances of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s.