Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Lois Vaughan (born March 27, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey; died April 3, 1990, in Hidden Hills, California) was an American jazz singer and pianist. Her father, Asbury Vaughan, was a carpenter and amateur guitarist; her mother, Ada, sang in the church choir and played piano. Sarah began piano and organ lessons at seven and served as organist at Newark’s Mount Zion Baptist Church as a teenager.

In 1942, Vaughan won the amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater with “Body and Soul.” She began her professional career performing and accompanying herself at Harlem clubs. From 1942 to 1944, she sang with Earl Hines’s band; from 1944 to 1945, she toured with Billy Eckstine’s big band, working alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and bringing bebop improvisation into vocal music.

“Lover Man” made Vaughan famous in 1945. She married George Treadwell in 1946, and he became her longtime manager. In 1954, she signed with Mercury and its jazz subsidiary EmArcy. Her 1955 album with trumpeter Clifford Brown, Sarah Vaughan, is widely regarded as a vocal-jazz landmark. Swingin’ Easy and Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin (both 1957), along with After Hours (1962), show how comfortably she moved from trio settings to orchestral arrangements.

Known as “Sassy” and “The Divine One,” Vaughan had a range of nearly three octaves. Her magnetic low register, controlled vibrato, and dramatic high notes made her one of the three great jazz singers alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. In 1982, she won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for Gershwin Live! The National Endowment for the Arts named her a Jazz Master in 1989. She died of lung cancer in 1990.