Sarah Vaughan

1350 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: History of music essay

Sarah Vaughan, born March 27, 1924, was very talented and everyone knew this. The word was passed along so even those that never went to church knew how gifted she was. The word got around to Newark's Little Jimmy Scott, a jazz singer himself. He remembered the gossip being that Sarah Vaughan could become another Marian Anderson.

Because Sarah grew up hearing her mother sing in the church choir, it seemed only natural for her to follow her mothers' footsteps and become involved with the musical life of the church. By October of 1942, 18 year old Sarah had already been playing the organ for years for choir rehearsals on Saturday mornings and for Sunday services. In addition to weekend services, she also played during the week for the children of the congregation. Sarah's parents found themselves in Newark, New Jersey after migrating from Virginia during the First World War. They also found that the church was growing because of the waves of people migrating from the south.

It started with trumpet player, Jabbo Smith, who recalls encouraging young Sarah to try to win an amateur night contest at the Apollo. For Sarah to try to win the contest was natural. She knew of many professional musicians who tried for prizes there and won. Before deciding she would perform on the Apollo stage herself, she encouraged Doris Robinson to compete and Sarah would accompany her on the piano. As a result, Doris won second place and split the money with Vaughan fifty-fifty. On an October night in 1942, Sarah "went on a dare" to the Apollo on the condition that her friends would be in the audience to cheer her on. Sarah Vaughan arrived so late on the night she was supposed to perform that Ralf Cooper, Sr., master of ceremonies, didn't w...

... middle of paper ...

...e home!" she told her daughter. At that time her daughter was working as an actress under the name Paris Vaughan and was featured in a television movie on the night of April 4th 1990 which happened to be forty-sixth anniversary of the day she official joined the Earl Hines band. "She died while watching the film."

Buried in Glendale Cemetery in Bloomfield, New Jersey, her death was a shock to many. In 1991 Carmen McRae put out an album entitled A Tribute to Sarah which celebrated the modest, shy, vulnerable side of her old friend.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Friedwald, Will. Jazz Singing. New York: Macmillan, 1990.

Gourse, Leslie. Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan. New York: Macmillan, 1993.

Nagel, Carol DeKane. African American Reference Library. New York: U X L, 1995.

Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: the Development of Jazz, 1930-1945. New York: Oxford, 1989.

Show More
Related

  • Research Paper On Florence Broadhurst

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    Death: 15 October 1977, Sydney. She was bludgeoned to death with a large piece of timber in her Paddington studio, her fingers found broken, and her body battered. The murder was never solved, but there has been some speculation that she was a victim of the serial killer, John Wayne Glover.

    Read More

  • The Popularity of The Burns and Allen Show

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ling of the Gracie Allen Drive, which was one of the last public appearances of Burns, Burns said “It's good to be here at the corner of Burns & Allen. At my age, it's good to be anywhere”. A few months later, Burns died of cardiac arrest.

    Read More

  • Scott Joplin

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    Scott Joplin, commonly known as the "King of Ragtime" music, was born on November 24, 1868, in Bowie County, Texas near Linden. Joplin came from a large musical family. His father, Giles Joplin was a musician who had fiddled dance music while serving as a slave at his master's parties. His mother, Florence Givens Joplin, born free and out of slavery, sang and played the banjo, and four of his brothers and sisters either sang or played strings.

    Read More

  • Brandy Hall

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    On the night of August 17, 2006 volunteer firefighter Brandy Hall showed up for her scheduled night shift. She was seen talking to a man named Randall Richmond and it has been reported that after using the phone she had to leave without working her shift (Pavul, 2011). This is the last time anyone sees or hears from Brandy Hall.

    Read More

  • Susan Smith

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    Susan Smith could have been a normal woman. If you passed her on the streets you wouldn’t know that she would turn out to be a killer. Susan had a secret though, a deadly secret. Susan Smith was a cold, calculating killer, capable of murder in cold blood. I believe Susan had many factors contributing to the state of mind she had before the murder of her two sons, like her traumatizing childhood and the many dysfunctional relationships she had.

    Read More

  • Bessie Smith

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    Known as the “Empress Of Blues”, Bessie Smith was said to have revolutionized the vocal end of Blues Music. She showed a lot of pride as an independent African-American woman. Her style in performance and lyrics often reflected her lifestyle. Bessie Smith was one of the first female jazz artists, and she paved the way for many musicians who followed.

    Read More

  • Ethel Waters

    1679 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896. She had a hard life in which she faced rejection from her mother and poverty. Waters' love of singing began as a child when she sang in church choirs but her childhood was cut short when at thirteen she married an abusive man, dropped out of sixth grade, and was divorced a year later. Shortly thereafter, she began working as a maid until two vaudeville producers discovered her while she was singing in a talent contest in 1917. She toured with vaudeville shows, and was billed as "Sweet Mama Stringbean" because of her height and thinness. In 1919, she left the vaudeville circuit and performed in Harlem nightclubs. Two years later she became one of the first black singers to cut a record on the Black Swan Record label with her release of "Down Home Blues" and "Oh, Daddy".

    Read More

  • Anna Quindlen

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anna Quindlen describes in the essay “Abortion is too Complex to Feel one Way About” the different situation that we as a human race are put in everyday. She talks about the topic of abortion in a way that one feels they have had to make the decision of whether or not a person is pro-choice or pro-life. She uses references that are of different personal experiences in the essay that are vital to the audience. Quindlen is writing to state her point that one should never put their self in this situation because one should take the proper responsibility. In this paper you will read about the conflict with abortion and what Quindlen thinks about this issue.

    Read More

  • Jazz Vocalist Billie Holiday

    574 Words  | 2 Pages

    She returned back to the home in 1926 after she had been sexually assaulted. In her difficult early life Holliday found solace in music, singing alone to the records of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Around 1930, Holiday beginning singing in local clubs and renamed herself “Billie” after the file star Billie Pove at the age of 18, Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond while she was performing in Harlem Jazz Club. Hammond was instrumental in getting Holiday recording with and up-and-coming Clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goudman. In 1934 they released 2 hits “Your Mother’s Son in-law” and the top ten hit “Ruffin the Scotch” October 1945 Holiday’s mother died and she began drinking more heavily and escalated the drug used to dose her grief. Holiday’s drug caused her a great professional set back that same year. She was arrested and conviction for narcotic possession in 1947. Sentenced to one year and a day of jail times. Holiday went to federal rehabilitation facility in Alderson, West Virginia. On July 17, 1959, Holiday died from alcohol and drug related complication. More than 3000 people turned out to say good-bye to Lady Day at her funeral held in St. Paul the Apostle Roman Catholic Church on July 21, 1959. In 2000 Holiday inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Billie Holiday Biography)

    Read More

  • Gwendolyn Brooks

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the idiom is local, the message is universal. Brooks uses ordinary speech, only words that will strengthen, and richness of sound to create effective poetry.

    Read More

  • Julia Child

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    “She was from Pasadena, this six-foot-two marvel of a woman. It was not so much because she was an extraordinary cook- and she would pointedly remind us that she was a cook, not a chef” (Kehoe 1). Julia Child was an extraordinary woman who had a passion for cooking that she didn’t even know could change the way people cook. Julia Child most definitely influenced cooking for generations to come with her passion for cooking and love for food.

    Read More

  • Margaret Walker

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1942, Margaret Walker won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her poem For My People. This accomplishment heralded the beginning of Margaret Walker’s literary career which spanned from the brink of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s to the cusp of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s (Gates and McKay 1619). Through her fiction and poetry, Walker became a prominent voice in the African-American community. Her writing, especially her signature novel, Jubilee, exposes her readers to the plight of her race by accounting the struggles of African Americans from the pre-Civil War period to the present and ultimately keeps this awareness relevant to contemporary American society.

    Read More

  • Shirley Temple Thesis

    695 Words  | 2 Pages

    The death of Shirley Temple at the age of 85 left many fans and movie buffs alike saddened.

    Read More

  • Aretha Franklin

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...espect," "Freeway of Love" and "I Say a Little Prayer” (“Biography”). She’s also still alive and her most recent album, “Aretha: A Woman Falling Out of Love” was released in 2011.

    Read More

  • Ancestor Report

    760 Words  | 2 Pages

    More mobs came to the village and pushed them out. They left for the Salt Lake Valley in July ,1847. They made it to the Salt Lake Valley September 18, 1850. They made it safe and well. She lived in Utah for a few months before she died. Becoming old then moving to Richmond, Cache County to live with her daughter. She had six children. She died age 77 on June 30, 1886.

    Read More

More about Sarah Vaughan

Open Document