Daring, full of spirit and a little mischievous. The meaning of she in the Oxford dictionary seems written exclusively for her. When Sarah Vaughan was affectionately given the nickname Sassy (or Sass, or as she sometimes wrote, Sassie) they hit the perfect key for her. Sassy the salty one who has never been able to get any imitators. What cannot be, cannot be and also...
It is still a fortunate coincidence that 1924 was the year of birth of two of the singers who marked the 20th century almost from beginning to end. On the one hand, La Divina, Maria Callas, and on the other, The Divine One, who cut his teeth as a jazz singer, a label he did not like at all, and who explored many vocal territories, from Brazilian sounds to popular music, because His portentous voice was a machete that made its way with its velvety touch.
Both Vaughan and Fitzgerald were very complete singers, with an endless box of lyrical resources. Holiday's lyrical tools, pursued by a life full of hardships and becoming a legend despite herself, were more limited, but she always made the most of them.
Vaughan, in her early days, opening for Fitzgerald in 1942 at only 18 years old, had her teeth gapped, but she put them together, so, of the six, Nina Simone, combative and political, was the only one who left us that particular hiss to singing and a thunderous piano, which had a life of its own and that she played herself.
There is a snapshot by French photographer Pierre Lenoir, taken on July 27, 1958 at the Blue Note in Paris, that defines Vaughan's enveloping voice and personality. Eyes closed, sweat running down her nose, face of almost orgasmic pleasure, left hand at the level of her neck, as if declaiming, more soprano than vocalist.
Muscles in tension, measured elegance, singing Maria, by Leonard Bernstein or Fly me to the moon. Those songs had been arranged by a very young Quincy Jones, who at 28 years old rubbed shoulders with the great stars of vocal jazz and advised them.
In another image, also by Lenoir, Vaughan and Jones joke between takes, she sitting, he half stretched out in a corner of the studio and, in the middle, the tape running in a giant wicker-covered picú like a picnic basket. Imagine, the nondescript ceiling was a sky full of passing clouds.
Vaughan sang slowly and vigorously, but the years flew by. In just a few months he collaborated with Earl Hines, pre-bop Dizzy Gillespie and one Charlie Parker. She was the first woman to cover Tenderly (it reached 27 on the charts) and who turned Lover Man into an anthem, a composition that was adopted by musical cultures, such as Latin jazz with Mongo Santamaría or Bola de Nieve.
Talent took her to the top and, although it was not as dramatic as Callas's and even less than Lady Day's (Billy Holiday), Vaughan was almost ruined by some of her husbands or managers (or both simultaneously). ) who looked much more at money than affection. The singer continually reinvented herself, whether performing with quartets and quintets, with symphonic bands, with her open-throated voice or collaborating with artists of XXL stature such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Marvin Gaye or the composer Michel Legrand. She even with the Brazilian gods of bossa and samba: Milton Nascimento, Dorival Caymmy or António Carlos Jobim.
Vaughan, born a century ago in Newark, New Jersey, had no children and adopted a daughter. But it could be said that she is the first great singer in a family of artists all born in the same city with legendary names like Frankie Valli, Paul Simon, Ice-T, Lauryn Hill, Gloria I will survive Gaynor or Whitney Houston. Badabum.
Nina Simone is famous for her political radicalism and her vindication of the first feminism. But Billie Holiday could not be more explicit in her denunciation of racism with Strange fruit (a black man hanged from a tree). Vaughan was not far behind and proclaimed her independence as a woman and singer. “It is innate in us that we must appease and appease: submit our will to that of men,” she once said. When she saw that he no means no, she always asked for a divorce.
On another occasion he blurted out, as if he were an independent film director: “My dream is to do what I want without interference from record companies.” And by faith he fulfilled it. He went from Columbia to Mercury, from there to Roulette, back to Mercury...
Sassy extended her career with self-confidence and without dragging herself and miraculously did not die on stage. Her last performance was at the Blue Note. The tour ended the next day. She died in 1990. Six years before Ella Fitzgerald. One hundred years later, her voice still sounds like fresh water flowing from the fountain.
But did his dream of looking like her figure come true? Guess who he was? None other than Judy Garland, who had, Sassy said, an inimitable voice. “She was the singer I most wanted to be like, not copy her, but capture that soul and purity that she had. “A wonderful, young voice.”
