Love Affair With a Virtuoso

Sometimes, she would forget the words. Nobody cared as long as Sarah Vaughan just kept on singing. Summer evenings under the stars at the Hollywood Bowl won’t be the same this year without the incomparable Vaughan, the jazz vocal virtuoso who died this week of lung cancer at age 66 in her Los Angeles home.

What a musical treasure was Sarah--the sound of her silky, rich and versatile vocal instrument was instantly identifiable. She and her contemporaries, Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae, define for most music lovers the very essence of great jazz singing. During nearly a half-century of performing for appreciative audiences all over the world, she never stopped challenging her considerable talent--from “jamming” Brazilian style to collaborating with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas to scatting recently in the studio for Quincy Jones.

Even now we can still hear her singing such standards such as “Send in the Clowns,” using that phrasing that made the listener hear the familiar anew. That song often served in recent years as her closing concert number. But thanks to CDs, cassettes and albums, the world’s musical love affair with Sarah Vaughan need never end.