Sarah Lois Vaughan (born March 27, 1924; died April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer and pianist. She was known by the nicknames "Sassy," "The Divine One," and "Queen of Bebop." Vaughan won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine Grammy Awards. In 1989, she received an NEA Jazz Masters Award. Critic Scott Yanow said she had "one of the most amazing voices of the 20th century."
Early life
Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Asbury "Jake" Vaughan, a carpenter who also played guitar and piano, and Ada Vaughan, a laundress who sang in the church choir. The Vaughans moved from Virginia and lived in a house on Brunswick Street in Newark during Vaughan's entire childhood.
Jake was deeply religious. The family was active in New Mount Zion Baptist Church, located at 186 Thomas Street. Vaughan began piano lessons at age seven, sang in the church choir, and played piano for rehearsals and church services. Sarah and her family were members of the Democratic Party.
She developed an early interest in popular music. In the 1930s, she often attended performances by local and touring bands at the Montgomery Street Skating Rink. By her mid-teens, she secretly visited Newark's night clubs and performed as a pianist and singer at the Piccadilly Club and Newark Airport.
Vaughan attended East Side High School, then transferred to Newark Arts High School, which opened in 1931. As her nighttime performances took more of her time, she left high school during her junior year to focus fully on her music career.
Career
Vaughan often went to New York City with her friend, Doris Robinson. In the fall of 1942, when Vaughan was 18 years old, she encouraged Robinson to enter the Apollo Theater Amateur Night contest. Vaughan played piano for Robinson, who won second prize. Later, Vaughan decided to compete herself. She sang "Body and Soul" and won, though the exact date of her performance is not known. She received $10 and a promise of a week's performance at the Apollo. On November 20, 1942, she returned to the Apollo to perform with Ella Fitzgerald.
During her week at the Apollo, Vaughan met bandleader and pianist Earl Hines. Details about how they met are unclear. Billy Eckstine, Hines' singer at the time, said he heard Vaughan perform and recommended her to Hines. Hines later claimed he discovered her and offered her a job immediately. After a short tryout, Hines replaced his female singer with Vaughan on April 4, 1943.
Vaughan toured with the Earl Hines big band from late 1943 to part of 1944. She was hired as a pianist so Hines could use the musicians' union rules instead of the singers' union rules. When Cliff Smalls joined the band, Vaughan's role shifted to singing. The band included important musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Bennie Green, and it helped develop bebop music. Gillespie arranged music for the band, but no recordings were made because of a recording ban by the musicians' union.
Eckstine left the Hines band in late 1943 and formed a new band with Gillespie. Parker joined Eckstine, and the band included other notable musicians. Vaughan joined Eckstine's band in 1944 and recorded her first song, "I'll Wait and Pray," for De Luxe on December 5, 1944. She also recorded for Continental with a group that included Gillespie and Georgie Auld. Vaughan left the Eckstine band in late 1944 to pursue a solo career but continued to work with Eckstine and record with him.
Pianist John Malachi gave Vaughan the nickname "Sassy," which matched her personality. She liked it, and the name became known as "Sass" or "Sassie" in written communication.
Vaughan started her solo career in 1945 by performing on 52nd Street in New York City at places like the Three Deuces and the Onyx Club. She also performed at the Braddock Grill near the Apollo Theater. On May 11, 1945, she recorded "Lover Man" for Guild with a group that included Gillespie and Parker. Later that month, she recorded additional songs with a larger group.
After recording "Time and Again" with violinist Stuff Smith in October 1945, Vaughan signed a contract with Musicraft. She recorded for Crown and Gotham before beginning to record as a leader for Musicraft in May 1946. She also performed regularly at Café Society Downtown, an integrated club in New York's Sheridan Square.
At Café Society, Vaughan became friends with trumpeter George Treadwell, who became her manager. Treadwell handled musical director duties for her recordings, allowing her to focus on singing. Over time, Treadwell changed Vaughan's appearance, including her wardrobe, hairstyle, and dental work to close a gap between her front teeth.
Vaughan's Musicraft recordings included songs like "If You Could See Me Now," "Don't Blame Me," and "Body and Soul." She married Treadwell on September 16, 1946.
In 1947, Vaughan performed at the Cavalcade of Jazz concert in Los Angeles. Other performers included T-Bone Walker, Woody Herman, and others. Her Musicraft recordings continued to succeed, including "Tenderly," which became a pop hit in 1947, and "It's Magic," which charted in 1948. Her recording of "Nature Boy" was made with an a cappella choir due to a recording ban.
The recording ban caused Musicraft financial trouble. Vaughan signed with Columbia Records and continued to have chart success with songs like "Black Coffee" in 1949. At Columbia, she recorded mostly commercial pop ballads, including "That Lucky Old Sun" and "I Cried for You."
Vaughan won awards from Esquire, Down Beat, and Metronome magazines. She performed in clubs nationwide and made her first symphony orchestra appearance in 1949. A nickname, "The Divine One," was given to her by a radio host. She appeared on television in the 1950s.
In 1949, Vaughan and Treadwell bought a house in Newark. However, business and personal issues caused their relationship to grow colder. Treadwell hired a road manager and opened a management office in Manhattan.
Vaughan became unhappy with Columbia Records due to the lack of creative freedom and financial success. She made some recordings with Miles Davis and Bennie Green in 1950, but these were different from her Columbia recordings.
Death
In 1989, Vaughan's health began to worsen, but she continued performing at first, giving a show in February. She canceled several performances in Europe that year because she needed treatment for hand arthritis. However, she completed a series of performances in Japan. During a performance at New York's Blue Note Jazz Club in 1989, Vaughan was diagnosed with lung cancer and became too ill to finish the final day of what would be her last set of public performances.
Vaughan returned to her home in California to start chemotherapy and spent her final months moving between the hospital and her home. She grew tired of the treatment and asked to be taken home. She passed away on the evening of April 3, 1990, at the age of 66, while watching Laker Girls, a television movie featuring her daughter.
Her funeral was held at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. After the ceremony, a horse-drawn carriage carried her body to Glendale Cemetery in Bloomfield.
Vocal commentary
People have compared Sarah Vaughan's voice to those of opera singers. Jazz singer Betty Carter said that with training, Vaughan could have "gone as far as Leontyne Price." Bob James, Vaughan's musical director in the 1960s, said, "the instrument was there. But the knowledge, the legitimacy of that whole world were not for her … But if the aria were in Sarah's range, she could bring something to it that a classically trained singer could not."
In a chapter about Vaughan in his book Visions of Jazz (2000), critic Gary Giddins described her as the "ageless voice of modern jazz – of giddy postwar virtuosity, biting wit and fearless caprice." He concluded, "No matter how closely we dissect the particulars of her talent … we must inevitably end up contemplating in silent awe the most phenomenal of her attributes, the one she was handed at birth, the voice that happens once in a lifetime, perhaps once in several lifetimes."
Her voice had wings: luscious and tensile, disciplined and nuanced, it was as thick as cognac, yet soared off the beaten path like an instrumental solo. Her voice was a four-octave muscle of infinite flexibility, which made her disarming shtick all the more ironic." – Gary Giddins
Her obituary in The New York Times described her as a "singer who brought an operatic splendor to her performances of popular standards and jazz." Jazz singer Mel Tormé said that she had "the single best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field." Her ability was envied by Frank Sinatra, who said, "Sassy is so good now that when I listen to her, I want to cut my wrists with a dull razor." The New York Times critic John S. Wilson said in 1957 that she possessed "what may well be the finest voice ever applied to jazz." It was close to its peak until shortly before her death at the age of 66. Late in life, she retained a "youthful suppleness and remarkably luscious timbre" and was capable of the projection of coloratura passages described as "delicate and ringingly high."
Vaughan had a large vocal range from soprano through a female baritone, exceptional body, volume, a variety of vocal textures, and superb and highly personal vocal control. Her ear and sense of pitch were almost perfect, and there were no difficult intervals.
In her later years, her voice was described as a "burnished contralto," and as her voice deepened with age, her lower register was described as having "shades from a gruff baritone into a rich, juicy contralto." Her use of her contralto register was likened to "dipping into a deep, mysterious well to scoop up a trove of buried riches." Musicologist Henry Pleasants noted, "Vaughan who sings easily down to a contralto low D, ascends to a pure and accurate [soprano] high C."
Vaughan's vibrato was described as "an ornament of uniquely flexible size, shape and duration," as well as "voluptuous" and "heavy." Vaughan was accomplished in her ability to "fray" or "bend" notes at the extremities of her vocal range. It was noted in a 1972 performance of Lionel Bart's "Where Is Love?" that "In mid-tune she began twisting the song, swinging from the incredible cello tones of her bottom register, skyrocketing to the wispy pianissimos of her top."
She held a microphone in live performance, using its placement as part of her performance. Her placement of the microphone allowed her to complement her volume and vocal texture, often holding the microphone at arm's length and moving it to alter her volume.
She frequently used the song "Send in the Clowns" to demonstrate her vocal abilities in live performance. The performance was called a "three-octave tour de force of semi-improvisational pyrotechnics in which the jazz, pop and operatic sides of her musical personality came together and found complete expression" by The New York Times.
Singers influenced by Vaughan include Amy Winehouse, Phoebe Snow, Anita Baker, Sade, and Rickie Lee Jones. Singers Carmen McRae and Dianne Reeves both recorded tribute albums to Vaughan following her death: Sarah: Dedicated to You (1991) and The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (2001), respectively.
Though usually considered a jazz singer, Vaughan avoided classifying herself as one. She discussed the term in a 1982 interview for Down Beat:
Vaughan mentioned Judy Garland as a major vocal influence in a 1969 interview for the Los Angeles Times: "Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice."
Personal life
Vaughan was married three times: first to George Treadwell from 1946 to 1958, then to Clyde Atkins from 1958 to 1961, and finally to Waymon Reed from 1978 to 1981. Because she could not have children of her own, Vaughan adopted a baby girl named Debra Lois in 1961. Debra worked as an actress during the 1980s and 1990s using the name Paris Vaughan. Through her daughter’s marriage, Vaughan became the mother-in-law of former NHL star Russ Courtnall.
In 1977, Vaughan ended her personal and professional relationship with Marshall Fisher. Although some people refer to Fisher as Vaughan’s third husband, they were never officially married. Vaughan began a relationship with Waymon Reed, a trumpet player who was 16 years younger than her and played with the Count Basie band. Reed joined her working trio as a musical director and trumpet player and became her third husband in 1978.
She is an honorary member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority.
Awards and honors
The album Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown and the song "If You Could See Me Now" were added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973. This award honors recordings that are at least 25 years old and have special value or importance. In 1985, Sarah Vaughan received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1988, she was added to the American Jazz Hall of Fame.
In 1978, Berklee College of Music gave her an Honorary Doctorate of Music. In 1982, Howard University also gave her an Honorary Doctorate of Music.
In 2012, Sarah Vaughan was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. From 2004 to 2006, New Jersey Transit honored her by including the lyrics to her song "Body and Soul" on the platforms of Newark Light Rail stations.
She received the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at the UCLA Spring Sing.
In 2003, cities in California, San Francisco and Berkeley, declared March 27 as Sarah Lois Vaughan Day through official proclamations.
The James Moody Jazz Festival holds an annual jazz vocalist competition named after Sarah Vaughan. This competition is also called the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, or the SASSY Awards, which honors her nickname.