Sarah Vaughan was born 90 years ago today. Vaughn was a jazz singer, described by Jazz commentator/music critic Scott Yanow as having one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century. Nicknamed Sassy, The Divine One and Sailor (for her salty speech), Vaughan was a Grammy Award winner. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989. Sarah Vaughans father, Asbury Jake Vaughan, was a carpenter by trade and played guitar and piano. Her mother, Ada Vaughan, was a laundress and sang in the church choir. Jake and Ada Vaughan had migrated to Newark from Virginia during the First World War. Sarah was their only biological child, although in the 1960s they adopted Donna, the child of a woman who traveled on the road with Sarah Vaughan. Vaughan developed an early love for popular music on records and the radio. In the 1930s, Newark had a very active live music scene and Vaughan frequently saw local and touring bands that played in the city at venues like the Montgomery Street Skating Rink. By her mid-teens, Vaughan began venturing (illegally) into Newarks night clubs and performing as a pianist and, occasionally, singer, most notably at the Piccadilly Club and the Newark Airport USO. In the early 1940s, Vaughn won the Apollo Theater Amateur Night contest. She sang Body and Soul,“ although the exact date of her victorious Apollo performance is uncertain. The prize was $10 and the promise of a weeks engagement at the Apollo. After a considerable delay, Vaughan was contacted by the Apollo in the spring of 1943 to open for Ella Fitzgerald. Some time during her week of performances at the Apollo, Vaughan was introduced to bandleader and pianist Earl Fatha Hines. Billy Eckstine, Hines singer at the time, has been credited by Vaughan and others with hearing her at the Apollo and recommending her to Hines. Hines also claimed later to have discovered her himself and offered her a job on the spot. Regardless, after a brief tryout at the Apollo, Hines officially replaced his current male singer with Vaughan on April 4, 1943. Vaughan spent the remainder of 1943 and part of 1944 touring the country with the Earl Hines big band that also featured baritone Billy Eckstine. This Earl Hines band is best remembered today as an incubator of bebop, as it included trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, saxophonist Charlie Parker (playing tenor saxophone rather than the alto saxophone that he would become famous with later) and trombonist Bennie Green. Gillespie also arranged for the band, although a recording ban by the musicians union prevented the band from recording and preserving its sound and style for posterity. Eckstine left the Hines band in late 1943 and formed his own big band with Gillespie. Vaughan accepted Eckstines invitation to join his new band in 1944, giving her an opportunity to develop her musicianship with the seminal figures in this era of jazz. Eckstines band also afforded her first recording opportunity, a December 5, 1944 date that yielded the song Ill Wait and Pray for the Deluxe label. That date led to critic and producer Leonard Feather to ask her to cut four sides under her own name later that month for the Continental label, backed by a septet that included Dizzy Gillespie and Georgie Auld. Vaughan officially left the Eckstine band in late 1944 to pursue a solo career, although she remained very close to Eckstine personally and recorded with him frequently throughout her life. Vaughan began her solo career in 1945 by freelancing in clubs on New Yorks 52nd Street such as the Three Deuces, the Famous Door, the Downbeat and the Onyx Club. Vaughan began performing regularly at Café Society Downtown, an integrated club in New Yorks Sheridan Square. While at Café Society, Vaughan became friends with trumpeter George Treadwell. Treadwell became Vaughans manager and she ultimately delegated to him most of the musical director responsibilities for her recording sessions, leaving her free to focus almost entirely on singing. Over the next few years, Treadwell also made significant positive changes in Vaughans stage appearance. Aside from an improved wardrobe and hair style, Vaughan had her teeth capped, eliminating an unsightly gap between her two front teeth. In 1989, Vaughans health began to decline, although she rarely revealed any hints in her performances. She canceled a series of engagements in Europe in 1989 citing the need to seek treatment for arthritis in the hand, although she was able to complete a later series of performances in Japan. During a run at New Yorks Blue Note Jazz Club in 1989, Vaughan received a diagnosis of lung cancer and was too ill to finish the final day of what would turn out to be her final series of public performances. Vaughan returned to her home in California to begin chemotherapy and spent her final months alternating stays in the hospital and at home. Vaughan grew weary of the struggle and demanded to be taken home, where she died on the evening of April 3, 1990, while watching a television movie featuring her daughter, a week after her 66th birthday. Here, Vaughn performs “Misty” in 1964.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 04:39:01 +0000