Sarah Vaughan
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Template:Unreferenced Sarah Lois Vaughan (nicknamed Sassy and The Divine One), (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was considered to be one of the greatest female jazz singers of the 20th Century, along with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
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Life and Career
Sarah Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1924, her carpenter father was an amateur guitarist and her laundress mother 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 bands second pianist.
Eckstine and Vaughan, having broken away from Hine'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-orientated 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/alto range.
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.
Vaughan was alleged to have been involved in a bisexual relationship with actress Tallulah Bankhead, but that has not been confirmed. [1]
Later Life
Vaughan continued recording jazz and pop material on a variety of labels in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and early 80s. She died in 1990.
External links
- A Brief summary of Vaughan's career
- BBC Profile of Sarah Vaughan
- IMDB Profile of Sarah Vaughan
- Personal recollections of Sarah Vaughan
- Profile of Vaughan from BookRags.com
- Profile of Vaughan from PBS American Masters
- Profile of Vaughan from PBS Ken Burns Jazz Series
Categories: 1924 births | 1990 deaths | African Americans | African-American singers | American female singers | American jazz singers | Deaths by lung cancer | Emmy Award winners | Entertainers who died in their 60s | Grammy Award winners | New Jersey musicians | Newarkers | Traditional pop music singers | WikiProject Musicians articles | Zeta Phi Beta sisters