SARAH VAUGHAN (ca. 1950s) Photo archive

Collection of eight approximately 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm) black-and-white photos of jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughan, generally very good+ or better, with photo agency stickers on verso, ca. 1950s.

– In an elaborate long gown. With photographer stamp on verso and printing notations.

– Duke Ellington, George Shearing, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine. From a Carnegie Hall concert of 1/1/57. With stamps on back from a magazine file.

– Vaughan and Eckstine singing into a microphone for MGM Records. With stamps on back from a magazine file.

– Vaughan with Jimmy Jones at piano and arranger Tadd Dameron. Photo was published in Metronome magazine, April 1950.

– Vaughan seated, singing. Printing notations on front with stamps on back from a magazine file.

– A close-up of Vaughan singing into a microphone, printed very dramatically in dark shades of black and gray.

– Two different shots of Vaughan (one of them double weight) with a matching dress and turban, singing from a score.

Critic Gary Giddins described her as the “ageless voice of modern jazz — of giddy postwar virtuosity, biting wit and fearless caprice”. He concluded by saying that “No matter how closely we dissect the particulars of her talent… we must inevitably end up contemplating in silent awe the most phenomenal of her attributes, the one she was handed at birth, the voice that happens once in a lifetime, perhaps once in several lifetimes. Her voice had wings: luscious and tensile, disciplined and nuanced, it was as thick as cognac, yet soared off the beaten path like an instrumental solo… that her voice was a four-octave muscle of infinite flexibility made her disarming shtick all the more ironic.”