Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan had perhaps the most extraordinary instrument of any jazz singer: a contralto-to-soprano range with the richness of an opera voice and the harmonic daring of a bebop horn. She’d been there at the birth of bebop, singing alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine bands, and that modern harmonic sense never left her.

What she could do with a melody was almost frightening. She’d swoop across two octaves, reharmonize a phrase on the spot, bend a note into a shape the songwriter never imagined, and make it all sound like the most natural thing in the world. Where Ella dazzled with swing and Billie with feeling, Sarah overwhelmed you with sheer vocal richness.

She could sing anything – lush ballads with strings, swinging small-group dates, pop hits – and the voice elevated all of it. Musicians adored her because she thought like one of them; she was a band member who happened to sing, trading ideas with the horns rather than just riding on top.

The nickname Sassy fit her offstage personality, and the Divine One fit the voice. Across a career of more than forty years it barely aged, deepening if anything, until it became one of the wonders of American music.