Sarah Vaughan Cherokee

Cherokee Vaughan Sarah

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924, Vaughan was immediately surrounded by music: her carpenter father was an amateur guitarist and her laundress mother was a church vocalist. Young Sarah studied piano from the age of seven, and before entering her teens had become an organist and choir soloist at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. When she was eighteen, friends dared her to enter the famed Wednesday Night Amateur Contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater. She gave a sizzling rendition of "Body and Soul," and won first prize. In the audience that night was the singer Billy Eckstine. Six months later, she had joined Eckstine in Earl Hines's big band along with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
Jazz critic Leonard Feather called her "the most important singer to emerge from the bop era." Ella Fitzgerald called her the world's "greatest singing talent." During the course of a career that spanned nearly fifty years, she was the singer's singer, influencing everyone from Mel Torme to Anita Baker. She was among the musical elite identified by their first names. She was Sarah, Sassy -- the incomparable Sarah Vaughan.