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Vaughan, Sarah
5 articles on Vaughan, Sarah
Vaughan, Sarah
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 784 Includes: Bibliography(b. 27 March 1924; d. 3 April 1990), jazz singer and pianist. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924, Sarah Lois Vaughan came from an African American family involved in music: her father was a guitarist and her mother, a gospel vocalist. Her parents, Ada and Asbury Vaughan, nurtured her music interest, and she began piano lessons and organ lessons at age seven and eight, respectively. By age twelve, Vaughan had become an organist and choir soloist at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. Vaughan attended Arts High School in Newark, and at eighteen, she entered the famed Wednesday Night Amateur Contest at Harlem's Apollo Theatre. Vaughan's dynamic performance of “Body and Soul” won the ten-dollar first prize. In the audience that night was the singer Billy Eckstine. Six months later, in 1944, she1945 ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 3481924–1990
American jazz singer and pianist, lauded for her pitch and range, whose singing style was informed by the harmony and improvisation of jazz horn sections. Sarah Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey. Her parents, both of whom were musicians, cultivated and nurtured her early interest in music. She began taking piano lessons at age seven and organ lessons at eight. By the age of twelve, she was playing the organ for the Mount Zion Baptist Church and singing in its choir. She later attended Arts High School in Newark.In 1942 Vaughan entered and won an amateur-night contest for which she sang “Body and Soul.” Her award was ten dollars and a week of performances at the Apollo Theater, an engagement which led to her being hired as a vocalist and second pianist in the big band led by Earl ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1774 Includes: Further Reading | Obituary:(27 Mar. 1924–3 Apr. 1990), jazz singer, was born Sarah Lois Vaughan in Newark, New Jersey, to Asbury Vaughan, a carpenter, and Ada Vaughan, a laundress. Her father, who played guitar for pleasure, and her mother, who sang in the choir of the local Mount Zion Baptist Church, gave their only daughter piano lessons from the age of seven. Before her teens Vaughan was playing organ in church and singing in the choir. In 1942, on a dare from a friend, she took the subway into Harlem and entered the Apollo Theatre's legendary Wednesday-night amateur contest. She won the ten-dollar first prize and a week-long spot there as an opening act.That engagement launched a singer who would soon develop a voice of operatic splendor and an imagination to match. Embraced early on by the pioneers of bebop, “The Divine One,” as she ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
Word Count: 1430 Includes: Bibliography(b. 27 March 1924 ; d. 4 April 1990 ),
jazz singer. Sarah Vaughan was a dedicated student of music whose training began when she was seven years old. By the time she burst into the public eye at age eighteen, winning a talent contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, she already possessed a sophisticated understanding of harmony and music theory. Vaughan served an apprenticeship on the road with the masters of the bebop revolution. When she came into her own, with the heart, soul, and mind of a master musician and the voice of a goddess, she conquered the worlds of jazz and popular singing, and was hailed by her contemporaries as the greatest singer of her time.Sarah Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Asbury Vaughan ...
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Source: Grove Music Online
Word Count: 632 Includes: Bibliography(b. Newark, NJ, 27 March 1924; d. Los Angeles, 3 April 1990). American jazz and popular singer. She sang in the choir of Mount Zion Baptist Church, Newark, as a child, where at the age of 12 she became organist. In October 1942 she won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater, New York; shortly afterwards, in April 1943, she joined Earl Hines’s big band as second pianist and singer to Hines and Billy Eckstine. Eckstine formed his own bop-orientated big band early in 1944, and Vaughan joined him a few months later, making her first recording with his orchestra on 31 December. She left Eckstine after about a year, and thereafter, except for a brief stay in John Kirby’s group in winter 1945–6, she worked only as a soloist. After George Treadwell (her manager and first husband) refashioned her stage appearance and repertory she achieved considerable success on television, in recordings from the late 1940s, ...
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