Artist Profile: Jazz Singer Sarah Vaughan

Born:

March 27th, 1924 in Newark, New Jersey

Died:

April 3rd, 1990

Early Life and Career

The virtuosic and diversely talented singer Sarah Vaughan was one of few jazz singers who was able to perform popular music to large audiences and jazz in small clubs with equal success. Born in 1924 in Newark, New Jersey, Vaughan began singing and playing piano in church. As a young girl, not yet of legal drinking age, she began to play and sing in jazz clubs in New York. In 1942, at age 18, she won the amateur night contest at Harlem’s renowned Apollo Theatre.

As the story goes, Billy Eckstine, another pioneering jazz singer, was in attendance that night, and convinced his bandleader, Earl Hines, to hire Vaughan as a second singer and pianist in the Earl Hines Big Band. In 1943, when Eckstine formed his own big band, Vaughan went with him. In what would become a fascinating period in jazz history, Vaughan worked with the jazz luminaries and fellow Eckstine band members Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.

Rise to Stardom

Vaughan soon transitioned to a solo career, and signed the first of several recording contracts with Columbia Records in 1949. Her output with Columbia focused mostly on popular songs, and her reputation grew. Vaughan also continued to make jazz recordings, and her 1954 Sarah Vaughan with trumpeter Clifford Brown is a great example of Vaughan’s jazz singing at its best. Her rendition of the Gershwin classic “Embraceable You” is a memorable gem from this session.

Vaughan made many recordings throughout the rest of her career, and in 1982 won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocalist for her album Gershwin Live!

Contributions to Jazz Singing

Vaughan, called “Sassy” by her fans, greatly expanded the role of the jazz singer. Her vocal timbre had a distinctive smoky and rich quality. Her range was expansive, and she had impeccable control and vibrato. This might have been enough to build a career for most singers, but Vaughan took her natural gifts even further by incorporating the sounds of bebop, which was changing the jazz world in the late 1930s and 40s. Though lyrics were always important to her, Vaughan made her mark with her embellishments of the melody that were inspired more by the instrumentalists of the bebop era than of jazz singers at the time. Sarah Vaughan was a great talent and recommended to anyone looking for a distinctive singer of both jazz and popular music whose technical gifts were equal to her interpretive accomplishments.