The Sarah Vaughan Centennial

Singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) was born 100 years ago today. Vaughan is often characterized on the short list of great 20th century jazz and blues singers, along with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, and others. However, Vaughan considered herself more of a pop singer, as her repertoire (indeed many of her hits) consisted of Broadway show tunes that had little technically to do with jazz. But it’s all about the timing. She came up during the age of big bands and be bop, and she associated and performed with the world’s top jazz musicians. The style was in her bones even if the vocal selections came from outside the genre.

Vaughan was from Newark. Her parents, a carpenter and a laundress, were musical. As a girl, she studied piano and organ, and sang in chorus. This led to her singing at local bars and nightclubs in her teenage years. In 1942 (age 18) she won the Amateur Night at the Apollo and this set her on her professional career path. She was booked for a week of performances there in late ’42, opening for Ella Fitzgerald. Throughout the 1943 and 1944 she toured with the legendary Earl Hines band, whose members included Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bennie Green, Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and Dexter Gordon. The following two years saw her efforts concentrated in New York, where she sang in 52nd Street jazz clubs, and at Cafe Society, the Sheridan Square venue that later became The Ridiculous Theatrical Company (now the Axis Company.) She met and married trumpet player George Treadwell, her first manager (later famous for managing The Drifters. The relationship lasted for about a decade, during which time, she had a couple of dozen Top 40 hits, including “It’s Magic” (#11, 1947), “Whatever Lola Wants (#6, 1955), and the rock-influenced “Broken Hearted Melody” (#7, 1959).

The latter tune seems a compromise to maintain her place in the charts, but didn’t afford her the kind of showcase her skills required. Critics and colleagues raved about the depth of Vaughan’s range, the tonal quality of her instrument, and her expertise in wielding that talent. To admirers, she was known as “The Divine One”. To close friends, she was known as “Sassy”. Frank Sinatra, one of her biggest supporters have her one of her first TV spots on his weekly variety show in 1950. Throughout the ’50s and beyond you could see her on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Tonight Show (with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson), The Arthur Murray Party, Kraft Music Hall, The Joey Bishop Show, Playboy After Dark, and scores of other national television platforms. She also appeared in the films Disc Jockey (1951) and Murder, Inc. (1960).

As tastes changed in the sixties, Vaughan and many of her generation of singers and musicians were largely relegated to a jazz subculture as the tastes of teenagers continued to dominate the charts and airwaves. By contrast the showstopper in Vaughan’s set during her later years was “Send in the Clowns”. Like all the jazz greats she found a second home in Europe where demand for her sophisticated style of music remained high. Perhaps this is why her adopted daughter, born in 1961, is known as “Paris”. (Paris was briefly an actress, appearing on such tv shows as Webster, Gimme a Break, A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Wayans Brothers during the 1980s and the early ’90s).

Sarah Vaughan’s last live performance dates were played at the Blue Note in New York, before lung cancer finally sidelined her. She died a few days after her 66th birthday, while watching the premiere of the TV movie Laker Girls, co-starring her daughter Paris.

For more on show biz history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and please stay tuned for the upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.