Search - Sarah Vaughan :: Sassy 1950-1954

Sensational sassy

Peter Shelley | Sydney, New South Wales Australia | 09/18/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Singers with technically accomplished voices usually leave me cold - Ella Fitzgerald being a perfect example - since their technique makes them sound emotionally antiseptic. Sarah Vaughan has been labeled as the most technical singer of her era, however I'd choose Sarah over Ella any day. Vaughan's showing off her dexterity isn't as smug as Fitgerald's - it's a lot more fun. This CD displays Miss Sassy in all her colours. She can jive with the best of them, even if she tends to allow the band to go off on endless riffs in her arrangements here with Clifford Brown, as in You're Not the Kind. But she slows down the hackneyed Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson September Song to sizzling effect. The tracks where she is accompanied by her Trio - John Malachi, Joe Benjamin and Roy Haynes feature defining classics Polka Dots and Moonbeams, a moving Body and Soul (which is like a textbook lesson in how to sing a torch song), and Prelude to a Kiss. These cuts push way beyond the constraints of "easy listening". I love how she introduces her trio in her self-penned Shulie a Bop. Pinky with Percy Faith and his Orchestra is a gorgeous sensual display of unworded vocalise, and Thinking of You with Norman Leyden's Orchestra shows how she can pull off the kind of conventional song you would associate with a lesser singer"