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A TAV Curator’s Pick.

“This Roulette Records' 1961 Birdland Series LP of Sarah Vaughan's After Hours was the first ever album by "Sassy" to feature just her voice with bass (George Duvivier) and guitar (Mundell Lowe) in a program of mostly ballads, with Miss Vaughan crooning quietly in a rarely used style. Her voice is at its peak on these intimate, relaxed, almost spontaneous sessions. A true jazz classic of considerable beauty, with George and Mundell perfectly complementing "the Divine Sarah" as she runs through a set of carefully chosen (yet unrehearsed) favorites, all songs one might've heard her perform in a smoky club well After Hours.

Just one gorgeous track after another here. On "Wonder Why" Vaughan plumbs the depths of her vocal range. "Easy to Love" features an outstanding walking bass line. They swing it so well, Sarah is moved to finger-snap. Her exquisite enunciation and vocal sliding are most noticeable on a mellow cover of Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady." The LP's most energetic song, "Great Day" again spotlights George's amazing bass work. A mere fragment, it fades out much too soon. On an impressive "Sentimental Mood," Sassy utilizes sharp, flat and quarter tones, and a few notes perhaps never heard before. The facáde of aloofness that shields a broken heart in "Vanity" makes for a melancholy, yet apropos, set closer.” – Acoustic Sounds

About Sarah Vaughan:

Sarah Lois Vaughan (1924 – 1990) was an American jazz singer, described by music critic Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."

Nicknamed "Sassy" and "The Divine One",  Sarah Vaughan was a Grammy Award winner. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its "highest honor in jazz", the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.

In a chapter devoted to Vaughan in his book Visions of Jazz (2000), critic Gary Giddins described Vaughan 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."

Source: Wiki

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