Sarah Vaughan

• Born: March 27, 1924
• Birthplace: Newark, New Jersey
• Died: April 3, 1990
• Place of death: Hidden Hills, California

Jazz singer

The first jazz singer to incorporate bop styling and phraseology into her vocals, Vaughan was one of the most influential artists in jazz over her forty-five-year career. Her recordings were prolific and diverse, encompassing a variety of styles, although she never strayed far from her jazz roots.

Early Life

Sarah Lois Vaughan (vahn) was born into a musical family in Newark, New Jersey, on March 27, 1924. Vaughan’s father, Asbury, was a carpenter who supplemented the family income by playing guitar. Her mother, Ada, was a laundress who sang in Newark’s Mount Zion Baptist church choir. As a child, Vaughan played the piano. By the mid-1930’s, she was singing and playing organ for the church.

Vaughan’s interest in music was not confined to church. By her teenage years, she had begun visiting and performing in a number of Newark’s nightclubs despite being underage. Her popularity at the Piccadilly Club led her to strive for a career in music. She dropped out of Newark’s Arts High School in 1940 to follow this dream.

Although Vaughan found singing engagements in Newark, her friend Doris Robinson persuaded her to go to New York. In 1942, Vaughan sang at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She won the contest, and with it the chance to open the next spring for Ella Fitzgerald. At that engagement, Billy Eckstine, a singer in Earl Hines’s band, saw Vaughan and recommended her to Hines. After her audition, she was hired and went on tour. This was Vaughan’s big break, gaining her national exposure and valuable experience. Although she never recorded with Hines because of a recording strike, she spent most of her off hours with fellow band members Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker “incubating” what developed into bop music. Vaughan did with her voice what innovative jazz instrumentalists were doing with melodies—breaking them down, rearranging them, and creating unique presentations without losing the heart of the song. By the time Vaughan left Hines in 1944 to join Eckstine’s new band, she had a sound all her own.

Life’s Work

In 1945, Vaughan left Eckstine’s band and became a solo artist. While she typically performed with her own trios over the next four decades, Vaughan’s popularity and unique style made her an in-demand guest vocalist for many other bands, including those led by Gillespie, Stuff Smith, and Quincy Jones, with whom Vaughan recorded one of her biggest hits in 1957, “Misty.”

During the 1950’s and 1960’s, Vaughan began to perform pop music, although she never completely left the realm of jazz. For example, during a stint with Mercury Records from 1954 to 1959, she cut popular records for the main label and pure jazz sides for Mercury subsidiary EmArcy. In all, Vaughan released more than one hundred long-playing albums during her career, while touring regularly.

Vaughan had three failed marriages and one long-term living arrangement. In her marital and business affairs, she was a strange contradiction. She actively sought to separate herself from the business side of her career to concentrate on her singing. Vaughan deferred all business dealings to her husbands, who alternately helped and hurt her career and financial stability. Although determined to delegate authority in business, Vaughan also had a very strong and often mercurial personality that balked at being controlled or manipulated. This combination led to frequent arguments, controversies, and perhaps even physical altercations.

Vaughan ceased recording and limited touring between 1967 and 1971 as a result of changing musical tastes, but her boundless energy could not be stifled for long. In 1971, Vaughan’s career picked up again, resulting in more than two dozen recordings in fifteen years, both her own records and guest vocals on other releases. The highlight of this phase of Vaughan’s career was her collaboration with Michael Tilson-Thomas and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on first a series of live performances, followed by a Public Broadcasting System special and a recording, Gershwin Live! (1982), for which she won a Grammy Award for Best Female Jazz Vocal Performance. In 1988, Vaughan was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame.

Although Vaughan continued to tour, in 1989 her health declined and began to affect her performances. Shortness of breath and fatigue led her to cancel a European tour. After a few months’ rest, Vaughn returned to performing in New York but soon received a diagnosis of lung cancer. She returned to California and began chemotherapy treatments, but with little improvement and her voice growing weaker, Vaughan eventually decided to cease treatment. She died on April 3, 1990, at the age of sixty-six.

Significance

Vaughan was a musical force in American music for more than four decades. Contemporaries Mel Torme and Betty Carter said that she had the greatest voice in jazz. In 1997, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark opened at Center Street and Sarah Vaughan Way, about two miles from where Vaughan grew up and three miles from Mount Zion Baptist Church, where she made her singing debut.

Bibliography

Crowther, Bruce, and Mike Pinfold. Singing Jazz: The Singers and Their Styles. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1997. An enlightening discussion of jazz singing styles and personalities. Discusses Vaughan’s career in detail, her influence on other singers, and the potential conflict between jazz and commercial singing.

Feather, Leonard. The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era. New York: Da Capo Press, 1987. Jazz promoter, critic, historian, and educator Feather’s memoir includes an account of his helping Vaughan obtain her first recording dates.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Cornel West. The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country. New York: Free Press, 2000. The authors present a decade-by-decade look at the twentieth century through the lives of prominent African Americans. Vaughan is included as an influence on the decade 1950-1959.

Gillespie, Dizzy, with Al Fraser. To Be or Not…to Bop. New York: Doubleday, 1979. In this autobiography, Gillespie discusses his relationship with many of the musical personalities of his era. Includes comments by and about Vaughan.

Gourse, Leslie. Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. Authoritative biography of Vaughan covers information from interviews with many people who knew and worked with her. Includes extensive discography.

Williams, Martin. The Jazz Tradition. 2d rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A series of essays presents the evolution of jazz through the contributions of two dozen major figures, including Vaughan.