ΘPARA ßPAR@ ` qTEXT ` cVaughan, Sarah Lois1924╨1990singerBorn in Newark, New Jersey, on March 27, 1924, Sarah Vaughan was the daughter of Asbury Vaughan, a carpenter, and Ada Baylor, a laundress. Both parents were also amateur musicians. Vaughan began studying piano and organ at age 7 and began her singing career in the choir of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Newark. After winning an amateur contest at Harlem╒s famed Apollo Theater in 1942, she was hired to sing with the Earl Hines Orchestra. A year later she went on to sing with the Billy Eckstine Band, where she met Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Vaughan╒s singing style was influenced by their instruments╤╙I always wanted to imitate the horns.╙ Gillespie, Parker and Vaughan recorded ╥Lover Man╙ together in 1945.While she was with the Eckstine Band, Vaughan sang in New York clubs like Copacabana, CafÄ Society Downtown, and the Onyx Club. She also toured the country, in the big cities and in the South, where being a woman apparently posed problems; audiences wanted to hear Eckstine, not her. By the mid-1940s, she began singing with John Kirby and appearing on television variety shows, including the Ed Sullivan Show.During the 1950s her audience grew as she toured both the U.S. and Europe, giving concerts at the Paramount Theater in New York, Birdland in New York, Storyville in Boston, and Molcambo in San Francisco. She signed with Mercury Record Corporation and EmArcy, Mercury╒s jazz label, in 1953 to sing both pop and jazz. She also appeared in three movies in this period, Jazz Festival, 1956, Disc Jockey, 1951, and Basin Street Revue, 1956, and in 1956 she participated in both the Newport and New York Jazz Festivals.A contralto with a range of three octaves, she was dubbed ╥the Divine One╙ and ╥Sassy╙ by her fans. She died on April 3, 1990, the same year in which she was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame. Nstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ & !I √ 5¬ ⁿ !I Ö 5¬ Ü !I
