Sarah Vaughan was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989.
74 Facts About Sarah Vaughan
2.
Sarah Vaughan began piano lessons at the age of seven, sang in the church choir, and played piano for rehearsals and services.
3.
Sarah Vaughan developed an early love for popular music on records and the radio.
4.
Sarah Vaughan attended East Side High School, then transferred to Newark Arts High School, which opened in 1931.
5.
Sarah Vaughan was frequently accompanied by a friend, Doris Robinson, on her trips into New York City.
6.
Sarah Vaughan played piano accompaniment for Robinson, who won second prize.
7.
Sarah Vaughan later decided to go back and compete as a singer herself.
8.
The prize, as Sarah Vaughan recalled to Marian McPartland, was $10 and the promise of a week's engagement at the Apollo.
9.
Sarah Vaughan spent the remainder of 1943 and part of 1944 touring the country with the Earl Hines big band, which featured Billy Eckstine.
10.
Sarah Vaughan was hired as a pianist so Hines could hire her under the jurisdiction of the musicians' union rather than the singers union.
11.
Sarah Vaughan accepted Eckstine's invitation to join his band in 1944, giving her the opportunity to record for the first time on December 5,1944, on the song "I'll Wait and Pray" for De Luxe.
12.
Sarah Vaughan left the Eckstine band in late 1944 to pursue a solo career, although she remained close to Eckstine and recorded with him frequently.
13.
Sarah Vaughan liked it, and the name and its shortened variant "Sass" stuck with colleagues and the press.
14.
Sarah Vaughan began her solo career in 1945 by freelancing on 52nd Street in New York City at the Three Deuces, the Famous Door, the Downbeat, and the Onyx Club.
15.
Sarah Vaughan spent time at Braddock Grill next to the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
16.
Sarah Vaughan delegated to him most of the musical director responsibilities for her recording sessions, allowing her to concentrate on singing.
17.
In 1947, Sarah Vaughan performed at the third Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr.
18.
Sarah Vaughan's recording success for Musicraft continued through 1947 and 1948.
19.
Sarah Vaughan's recording of "Nature Boy" from April 8,1948, became a hit around the time the popular Nat King Cole version was released.
20.
Sarah Vaughan used the missed royalty payments as an opportunity to sign with the larger Columbia record label.
21.
Sarah Vaughan won Esquire magazine's New Star Award for 1947, awards from Down Beat magazine from 1947 to 1952, and from Metronome magazine from 1948 to 1953.
22.
Sarah Vaughan made some small-group recordings in 1950 with Miles Davis and Bennie Green, but they were atypical of what she recorded for Columbia.
23.
Sarah Vaughan was paired with producer Bob Shad, and their working relationship yielded commercial and artistic success.
24.
Sarah Vaughan's debut recording session at Mercury took place in February 1954.
25.
Sarah Vaughan was reunited with Billy Eckstine for a series of duet recordings in 1957 that yielded the hit "Passing Strangers".
26.
Sarah Vaughan was featured at the first Newport Jazz Festival in the summer of 1954 and starred in subsequent editions of that festival at Newport and in New York City for the remainder of her life.
27.
At the 1955 New York Jazz Festival on Randalls Island, Sarah Vaughan shared the bill with the Dave Brubeck quartet, Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, and the Johnny Richards Orchestra.
28.
Sarah Vaughan had entirely delegated financial matters to Treadwell, and despite significant income figures reported through the 1950s, at the settlement Treadwell said that only $16,000 remained.
29.
Sarah Vaughan made her UK debut in 1958 at Sunday Night at the London Palladium with several songs including "Who's Got the Last Laugh Now".
30.
Sarah Vaughan made Atkins her manager, although she was still feeling the sting of the problems she had with Treadwell and initially kept a closer eye on Atkins.
31.
Sarah Vaughan began recording for Roulette in April 1960, making a string of large ensemble albums arranged or conducted by Billy May, Jimmy Jones, Joe Reisman, Quincy Jones, Benny Carter, Lalo Schifrin, and Gerald Wilson.
32.
Sarah Vaughan recorded After Hours with guitarist Mundell Lowe and double bassist George Duvivier and Sarah + 2 with guitarist Barney Kessel and double bassist Joe Comfort.
33.
Sarah Vaughan turned to two friends to help sort out the financial affairs of the marriage.
34.
Sarah Vaughan retained custody of their child and Golden took Atkins' place as Sarah Vaughan's manager and lover for the remainder of the decade.
35.
When her contract with Roulette ended in 1963, Sarah Vaughan returned to the more familiar confines of Mercury.
36.
Sarah Vaughan didn't complain about this eclectic change in direction, but she chose the material for her next album after admiring the work of Michel Legrand.
37.
Sarah Vaughan conducted an orchestra of over one hundred musicians for Sarah Vaughan with Michel Legrand, an album of compositions by Legrand with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
38.
Sarah Vaughan sang a version of the pop hit "Rainy Days and Mondays" by the Carpenters for Feelin' Good.
39.
Sarah Vaughan disliked the songs and hated the album cover depicting a clown with an afro.
40.
Sarah Vaughan filed a lawsuit against Shad in 1975 on the belief that the cover was inconsistent with the formal, sophisticated image she projected on stage.
41.
Sarah Vaughan contended that the album Sarah Vaughan: Live at the Holiday Inn Lesotho had an incorrect title and that Shad had been harming her career.
42.
Sarah Vaughan learned it on piano, made many changes with the help of pianist Carl Schroeder, and it became her signature song.
43.
The orchestra was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, who was a fan of Sarah Vaughan and invited her to perform.
44.
Thomas and Sarah Vaughan repeated the performance with Thomas' home orchestra in Buffalo, New York, followed by appearances in 1975 and 1976 with other symphony orchestras in the United States.
45.
Sarah Vaughan was enthusiastic to be more involved in the making of an album, but Atlantic rejected it on the claim that it contained no hits.
46.
Sarah Vaughan said, "I don't give a damn about record companies any more".
47.
Sarah Vaughan traveled throughout South America: Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.
48.
Sarah Vaughan was enamored of Brazil, as this was her third tour of Brazil in six years.
49.
Sarah Vaughan had an album but no label to release it, so she signed to Pablo run by Norman Granz.
50.
Sarah Vaughan had known Granz since 1948 when she performed on one of his Jazz at the Philharmonic tours.
51.
Sarah Vaughan was the record producer and manager for Ella Fitzgerald and the owner of Verve.
52.
Sarah Vaughan was dedicated to acoustic, mainstream jazz and had recorded Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Clark Terry.
53.
Sarah Vaughan made a guest appearance in 1984 on Barry Manilow's 2:00 AM Paradise Cafe, an album of pastiche compositions with established jazz musicians.
54.
In 1985 Sarah Vaughan reconnected with her longstanding, continually growing European audience during a celebratory concert at the Chatelet Theater in Paris.
55.
Thanks in part to the hard-swinging telepathic support of pianist Frank Collett, Sarah Vaughan reprises Tad Dameron's "If You Could See Me Now" with uncommon power, her breathstream effecting a seamless connection between chorus and bridge.
56.
On June 16,1985, Sarah Vaughan appeared at the Playboy Jazz Festival.
57.
In 1986, Sarah Vaughan sang "Happy Talk" and "Bali Ha'i" in the role of Bloody Mary on a studio recording by Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras of the score of the Broadway musical South Pacific, while sitting on the studio floor.
58.
In 1989, Sarah Vaughan's health began to decline, although she rarely revealed any hints of this in her performances.
59.
Sarah Vaughan canceled a series of engagements in Europe in 1989, citing the need to seek treatment for arthritis of the hand, although she was able to complete a series of performances in Japan.
60.
Sarah Vaughan returned to her home in California to begin chemotherapy and spent her final months alternating stays in the hospital and at home.
61.
Sarah Vaughan grew weary of the struggle and demanded to be taken home, where at the age of 66 she died on the evening of April 3,1990, while watching Laker Girls, a television movie featuring her daughter.
62.
Sarah Vaughan's funeral was held at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey.
63.
Sarah Vaughan's voice had wings: luscious and tensile, disciplined and nuanced, it was as thick as cognac, yet soared off the beaten path like an instrumental solo.
64.
Sarah Vaughan had a large vocal range of soprano through a female baritone, exceptional body, volume, a variety of vocal textures, and superb and highly personal vocal control.
65.
Sarah Vaughan held a microphone in live performance, using its placement as part of her performance.
66.
Sarah Vaughan frequently used the song "Send in the Clowns" to demonstrate her vocal abilities in live performance.
67.
Singers influenced by Sarah Vaughan include Phoebe Snow, Anita Baker, Sade, and Rickie Lee Jones.
68.
Sarah Vaughan discussed the term in a 1982 interview for Down Beat:.
69.
Sarah Vaughan was married three times: to George Treadwell, to Clyde Atkins, and to Waymon Reed.
70.
Unable to bear children, Sarah Vaughan adopted a baby girl in 1961.
71.
In 1977, Sarah Vaughan ended her personal and professional relationship with Marshall Fisher.
72.
Sarah Vaughan began a relationship with Waymon Reed, a trumpet player 16 years her junior who was playing with the Count Basie band.
73.
Sarah Vaughan was a member of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority.
74.
Sarah Vaughan was given the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at the UCLA Spring Sing.