On March 27, 1924, Sarah Vaughan was born. Vaughan was a pop and jazz singer with a wide range, a powerful voice, and impeccable technical control. She continued to perform and record until shortly before her death in 1990, with very little change or loss of quality in her voice.

Vaughan's career began at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where she won an amateur night contest in 1942. The prize was ten dollars and a one-week engagement at the Apollo. When Vaughn returned to the Apollo in November for her week of performances, she opened for Ella Fitzgerald. During that week, she met pianist/bandleader Earl "Fatha" Hines, who hired her to sing with his band. Vaughn spent a bit more than a year with Hines, singing with baritone Billy Eckstine. When Eckstine left to form his own band in 1944, Vaughn went with him. Sadly, there are no recordings of Vaughn with Hines' band, and very few with Eckstine's, because the musicians' union was on strike for two years in a dispute over the use of pre-recorded music on radio.

Vaughn went solo in 1945 and began releasing singles. She quickly became popular among jazz critics and fans, and unexpectedly broke onto the pop charts in 1947 with "That Lucky Old Sun."

By the mid-1950s, Vaughn was tiring of the commercial material that Columbia Records wanted her to sing, and she signed a new contract with Mercury Records that would allow her to record pop material on Mercury, and jazz albums for Mercury's subsidiary label, EmArcy. Her pop success continued at Mercury, with such hits as "Whatever Lola Wants," "Misty," and the biggest hit of her career, "Broken Hearted Melody."

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Vaughn toured almost constantly, performing in nightclubs and at jazz festivals, often with other major stars of the era. Her recording career struggled somewhat in the 1960s. The small label Roulette became notorious for financial mistreatment of its artists, and by the time Vaughn returned to Mercury in the mid-1960s, the explosion of rock music was cutting into album sales for jazz and pop singers.

But in the 1970s and 1980s, Vaughn made some of the most critically acclaimed albums of her career – a tribute to Duke Ellington, a collaboration with Count Basie. She also popped up with guest appearances in unlikely places – the song "Blue" on a Barry Manilow jazz album, playing Bloody Mary in a 1986 studio recording of South Pacific, and – her final recordings – appearing on several tracks of Quincy Jones's Back on the Block, including a brief duet with Ella Fitzgerald, for whom she had opened in her first appearances at the Apollo more than 40 years earlier.

Vaughan resisted being labeled a jazz singer, saying "what I want to do is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music." And there are unexpected ventures in her discography, such as an album of movie songs by Henry Mancini or a collection of Beatles songs. But her fellow singers certainly praised and respected her as a jazz singer; Frank Sinatra said that Vaughan was "so good that when I listen to her I want to cut my wrists with a dull razor," and Mel Torme thought she had "the single best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field." Several singers have recorded albums in tribute to Vaughn, among them Ann Hampton Callaway, Carmen McRae, and Dianne Reeves.

Two of Vaughan's recordings have been added to the Grammy Hall of Fame, an honor for recordings of "qualitative or historical significance" – the 1946 single "If You Could See Me Now" and the 1954 album Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown. In addition to the songs and albums linked above, much more of Vaughan's music is available for streaming or download at Freegal and Hoopla.