This essay first appeared on Medium on March 19, 2024 in honor of the Centennial Anniversary of the birth of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan.
SASSY 100: CELEBRATING THE SARAH VAUGHAN CENTENNIAL
By Chris Matthew Sciabarra
A week
from today, on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, the music world will mark the one
hundredth anniversary of the birth of
legendary jazz vocalist, Sarah
Vaughan. Nicknamed “Sassy”
by pianist John
Malachi and, later, “The
Divine One,” Vaughan left
us an artistic legacy that has reverberated throughout the history of jazz.
From Newark, New Jersey to a Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award
Born in
Newark, New Jersey, Vaughan began
her musical journey at the age of 7, taking piano lessons and singing in the
church choir. Performing in her teens at The
Piccadilly near Newark Airport, she soon
dropped out of high school. Singing “Body and Soul” at Amateur
Night at the Apollo Theater, she won that
competition in 1942. By November of that year, she opened for Ella
Fitzgerald at that same venue. In 1943, she
began touring with the Earl
Hines big band, which served as a
springboard for the pioneers of bebop.
Its personnel included such luminaries as vocalist Billy
Eckstine, trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie
Parker. By 1945, Vaughan launched
a solo career, frequenting jazz clubs on New York’s 52nd
Street. Recording contracts followed, as
did a few pop hits in 1947–1948, with such songs as “Tenderly,”
“It’s
Magic,” and “Nature
Boy.”
In those early years, much like
others of her generation, Vaughan faced the ugliness of prejudice. In a 1961 DownBeat magazine
interview,
Vaughan told Barbara Gardner: “I often wished I was a medium-brown skin color. …
I imagined people that color were regarded more highly than I. To most persons
who knew me, I thought, I was just another little black girl for whom the future
was just as dark as it was for thousands of others like me.” She recalled that
when she was introduced to a Chicago audience by disc jockey Dave
Garroway in the early 1950s, she was
greeted by tomatoes thrown at her head by a few young bigots sitting in the
balcony. Her first thought was that she’d been shot, when she “saw red stains
spreading down her white dress.” Frightened, confused, and humiliated, Vaughan
huddled in the wings off-stage. Garroway was so incensed that he gave an
impassioned speech against racism. Gardner writes:
From the audience came thunderous applause for the
singer, and a demand that she return. She went back to the microphone in tears,
and looked out into what she felt was the last audience she would ever face. She
tried to sing. She could not utter a sound. After several futile starts, she
left the stage, positive she would never sing again. But so sympathetic was
public response to the incident, and so immediate, that she was persuaded not to
give up her career.
It was
Dave Garroway who dubbed her “The
Divine One.”
In the decades that followed, she
engaged in nonstop touring and received critical recognition in magazines such
as Esquire, DownBeat,
and Metronome.
She made banner recordings with her trio and with large ensembles arranged and
conducted by the likes of Billy
May, Don
Costa, Quincy
Jones, and Gerald
Wilson. Her sublime
1972 recordings with composer and arranger Michel
Legrand, who conducted a wondrous orchestra
of a hundred musicians, is among my all-time favorites. Her exquisite Brazilian
sessions in the late 1970s and 1980s were
such standouts that Tom
Moon declared her “arguably, the foremost
interpreter of Brazilian music in jazz history.” And when she wasn’t vocally
caressing the timeless classics of Antonio
Carlos Jobim and Milton
Nascimento, she continued to provide fresh
takes on the Great
American Songbook with the cream of the
jazz crop on such albums as “How
Long Has This Been Going On?” (1978),
featuring pianist Oscar
Peterson, guitarist Joe
Pass, bassist Ray
Brown, and drummer Louis
Bellson. In the same year of that album’s
release, Vaughan received
an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Berklee
College of Music. Throughout her storied
career, she was the recipient of a
Grammy Award (out of nine nominations) as
well as a Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award.
A Legacy of Musical Artistry
Dubbed
the “Queen
of Bebop” by Elaine
Hayes, Vaughan’s stylings defied any such
categorization. She had an incomparable 4-octave vocal range, which could be
operatic at times, while providing a depth of texture, control, and flexible
whimsy over which other musicians marveled. Jazz instrumentalists — from horn
legend Dizzy
Gillespie to the great pianist Chick
Corea — respected her as one of their own.
Way back in the 1940s, when she joined the Earl
Hines big band, Gillespie was
so impressed by her vocal prowess that he viewed her “as good a musician as
anybody” in the group. And Corea,
who led Vaughan’s trio for a year, said that “working with Sarah was like
getting to work with Miles [Davis]. Her music was so beautiful … [she] was the
ultimate solo singer, but she encouraged interaction between me and her. I
really learned from her.”
Her
vocal contemporaries were second to none in their appreciation of her talent. Frank
Sinatra said of her extraordinary artistry,
“when I listen to her I want to cut my wrists with a dull razor.” Mel
Torme praised her for having “the single
best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field,” while Ella
Fitzgerald called her the world’s “greatest
singing talent.”
Among
music critics, John
S. Wilson believed she had “what may well
be the finest voice ever applied to jazz.” And for Gary
Giddins, Vaughan was
as fine an interpreter of the standard pop-song repertory
as we have had and almost certainly the most self-possessed. Her control of
timbre, articulation, and dynamics were matched by infallible pitch; the rare
ability to improvise harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically; and an
unfettered imagination that made it all count for something. She was a full
partner in the germination of modern jazz. But no matter how closely we dissect
the particulars of her talent, marveling at her range and energy and
intelligence, transcribing and analyzing her performances, tracing her
development over time, we must inevitably end up contemplating in silent awe the
most phenomenal of her attributes, the one she was handed at birth: a voice that
happens once in a lifetime, perhaps once in several lifetimes.
Vaughan influenced
a generation of singers from Anita
Baker to Rickie
Lee Jones. In the wake of her death at the
age of 66 on April
3, 1990, two of her biggest fans, jazz
vocalists Carmen
McRae and Dianne
Reeves, recorded poignant albums in tribute
to her impact.
My YouTube Tribute to Sassy
I have
loved Sarah Vaughan for almost as many years as I have loved music. Since 2004,
when “My
Favorite Songs” series began, I have posted
over 50 songs in which Sarah Vaughan was the featured vocalist. I never had the
honor of seeing her in person, but I saw her in so many live performances on
television and fell in love with her immense talent, staggering virtuosity, and
creative playfulness, whether she was singing with the Boston
Pops Orchestra or on the Merv
Griffin Show with Mel Torme [YouTube
links]. When I was 14 years old, I made an audio cassette recording of her on
the PBS show, “In
Performance at Wolf Trap.” That concert,
which aired
on October 28, 1974, has only been seen in
various snippets on YouTube (H/T The
Jazz Archives). It hasn’t been seen or
heard in its entirety in nearly fifty years. From her effortless modulations in
“Someone to Watch Over Me” to her scintillating scatting in “Scattin’ the
Blues,” Vaughan provides
us with a treasure trove of material here, delivered with charming musicality.
Though I do not have the video of this performance, I have created a collage of Vaughan
memorabilia to accent the audio recording
of this wonderful concert. In honor of The
Sassy Centennial, that video debuts on my
YouTube channel here.
One hundred years since her birth,
nearly a quarter century since her death, the Divine
One lives on!
In
Performance at Wolf Trap: https://youtu.be/lwkl0s0DTkc
PBS-TV, October 28, 1974, Sarah Vaughan segment from
“Buddy Rich & Sarah Vaughan”
Sarah Vaughan, vocals
Carl Schroeder,
piano
Frank de la Rossa,
bass
Jimmy Cobb, drums
Track listing
6.
Medley: It’s
Magic; Everything
I Have is Yours; My
Reverie; Body
and Soul; Street
of Dreams; Moonlight
in Vermont; I
Cover the Waterfront
Postscript
On
March 27, 2024, to mark the actual date of the Sassy Centennial, an audio
recording of Sarah Vaughan’s appearance with Mel
Torme on The
Merv Griffin Show, which aired on Metromedia Channel
5 in NYC (circa 1976–77), has been posted to YouTube. Merv
Griffin’s musical director, Mort
Lindsey, leads the band. The only track
that has been seen in video format on YouTube is the song “Oh,
Lady Be Good!”. I recorded this from my TV
when it originally aired. The montage presents the songs performed on that show
in their entirety for the first time:
Check
out the Vaughan-Torme YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfEybnXZV_s
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