Sarah Vaughan

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Sarah Vaughan <tr style="text-align: center;"><td colspan="3">Image:Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown.jpg Vaughan on cover of Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown, 1954 </td></tr>
Background information <tr><td>Birth name</td><td colspan="2">Sarah Lois Vaughan</td></tr><tr><td>Born</td><td colspan="2">March 27, 1924</td></tr><tr><td>Origin</td><td colspan="2">Newark, New Jersey, United States</td></tr><tr><td>Died</td><td colspan="2">April 3, 1990</td></tr><tr><td>Genre(s)</td><td colspan="2">Vocal jazz</td></tr><tr><td style="padding-right: 1em;">Label(s)</td><td colspan="2">Mercury</td></tr>

Sarah Lois Vaughan (nicknamed Sassy and The Divine One), (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer, described as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century [1].

1 Life and career
2 Marriages, relationships
3 Later life
4 Songs associated with Vaughan
5 Selected albums
6 Tributes
7 External links

[edit] Life and career

Sarah Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1924. Her father, who worked as a carpenter, was an amateur guitarist, and her mother, a laundress, was also a church vocalist.

Like Carmen McRae, she studied the piano from an early age, and before entering her teens had become an organist and a choir soloist at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. In a story reminiscent of Ella Fitzgerald's discovery, at the age of eighteen, a dare from friends resulted in her entering the famed Amateur Contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1942. Her rendition of the jazz standard "Body and Soul" won her first prize. In the audience that night was the singer Billy Eckstine. Six months later, she had joined Eckstine in Earl Hines’s big band, and sang alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, as well as being the band's second pianist.

Eckstine and Vaughan, having broken away from Hines's band, along with Gillespie and Parker, performed together until she went solo in 1945 (after having spent a short time with John Kirby's band).

Becoming a solo artist, she married trumpeter George Treadwell in 1947, whom she had met at the New York City nightclub, Cafe Society. Recognizing his wife's huge potential, he soon became her manager.

"Tenderly" and "It's Magic" became popular during the late 1940s, and she continued to build on her fanbase in the 1950s with songs like "Misty" and "Broken-Hearted Melody." She continued playing with some of the biggest names in the business, including Miles Davis and Jimmy Jones.

Throughout the 1950's, she recorded music in a more popular vein for Mercury Records, or more jazz-oriented material for their subsidiary label EmArcy Records.

Vaughan was well known for her vocal range, which ranged from soprano to baritone and her signature beautiful vibrato. She was musically trained from a very young age and was renowned for her talent in interpreting songs and improvising.

Like the other great singers of her generation, Vaughan became one of the key interpreters of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s and rode the Bossa nova wave in the 1960s.

In the 1970s and 1980s, her lower vocal range increased, allowing her to sing the baritone range while still being able to use her existing soprano range. She normally sang in the contralto and alto range.

[edit] Marriages, relationships

Sarah Vaughan was married four times: to bandleader George Treadwell, to the American football player Clyde Atkins, to the Las Vegas restaurateur Marshall Fisher, and to the jazz trumpeter Waymon Reed; all ended in divorce. She had one daughter, Deborah "Paris" Vaughan.

[edit] Later life

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Vaughan continued recording jazz and pop material on a variety of labels from the 1950s to the early 1980s. In the 1970s she began to make Send in the Clowns a common ending song whereas before she was more known for Misty. She also worked with varied musicians of both the younger and older generations. From 1977 to 1982 she was with Norman Granz's Pablo Records. She won for female jazz vocalist at the Grammy Awards of 1983 for Gershwin Live!, which saw her working with Michael Tilson Thomas. A lifelong chain-smoker, she died in 1990 from complications of lung cancer.

[edit] Songs associated with Vaughan

[edit] Selected albums

1949 Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi
1954 Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown
1955 In the Land of Hi-Fi
1955 After Hours
1957 At Mister Kelly's
1957 Swingin' Easy
1957 Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin
1957 No Count Sarah
1957 Sarah Vaughan Sings Great Songs From Hit Shows
1959 After Hours at the London House
1962 You're Mine You
1963 Sarah Sings Soulfully
1963 Sarah Slightly Classical
1963 Sassy Swings the Tivoli
1963 Snowbound
1963 Vaughan With Voices
1964 Sweet 'N' Sassy
1964 The Lonely Hours
1965 Viva! Vaughan
1965 Sarah Vaughan Sings the Mancini Songbook
1966 The New Scene
1967 Sassy Swings Again
1967 It's A Man's World
1972 With Michel Legrand
1973 Live in Japan
1974 Send in the Clowns
1977 I Love Brazil
1978 How Long Has This Been Going On?
1979 The Duke Ellington Songbook, Vol. 1
1979 The Duke Ellington Songbook, Vol. 2
1979 Copacabana
1981 Send in the Clowns
1981 Songs of the Beatles
1982 Crazy and Mixed Up
1982 Gershwin Live!
1984 The Mystery of Man
1987 Brazilian Romance
1989 Back on the Block

[edit] Tributes

In 2004-2006, New Jersey Transit paid tribute to Miss Vaughan in the design of its new Newark Light Rail stations. Passengers stopping at any station on this line can read the lyrics to one of her signature songs, Send in the Clowns, along the edge of the station platform.

On March 27th, 2003 - the Cities of San Francisco and Berkeley, California [initiated by Susie M. Butler] signed a proclaimation making March 27th "Sarah Lois Vaughan Day" in their respective cities.