Sunday Open thread

Happy Sunday, P.O.U. Family and lurkers! Enjoy the sounds of Sarah Vaughan.

Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having “one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century.”

Nicknamed “Sailor” (for her salty speech),”Sassy” and “The Divine One”, Sarah 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.

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Although Vaughan is usually considered a “Jazz Singer”, she avoided classifying herself as such. Indeed, her approach to her “Jazz” work and her commercial “Pop” material was not radically different. Vaughan stuck throughout her career to the jazz-infused style of music that she came of age with, only rarely dabbling in rock-era styles that usually did not suit her unique vocal talents. Vaughan discussed the label in an 1982 interview for Down Beat:

“I don’t know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I’m not putting jazz down, but I’m not a jazz singer. Betty Bebop (Carter) is a jazz singer, because that’s all she does. I’ve even been called a blues singer. I’ve recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I’m either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can’t sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing ‘Send In the Clowns’ and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.”

Vaughan was an accomplished pianist with a fine ear for bebop harmonies, but her most obvious gift was always her powerful voice. Her vocal range was vast in her youth, stretching from true female baritone lows to mezzo-soprano highs; as she aged, her lower register became stronger and her forays into her (still-strong) mezzo register became rare.  The dynamic range, tonal quality and sheer beauty of her voice were near-operatic, while she attended. Vaughan was proficient at scatting, the improvisatory aspect of her art was focused more on ornamentation, phrasing and variation on melodies, which were almost always jazz standards. Perhaps her most noticeable musical mannerism was the creative use of often widely “swooping” glissandi through her wide entire vocal range, which was most sonorous in a dark chest register that grew deeper as she aged. Vaughan approached her voice more as a melodic instrument than a vehicle for dramatic interpretation of lyrics, although the expressive qualities of her style did accentuate lyrical meaning and she would often find unique and memorable ways of articulating and coloring individual key words in a lyric.