March 27: "The Divine One," Sarah Vaughan, was born on this date in 1924...

... she died on April 3, 1990 when she was 66 years-old.


Sarah Lois Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey. Her father, Asbury "Rat Fool" Vaughan, was a carpenter by trade and played guitar and piano. Her mother, Ada, sang in the church choir. Sarah began piano lessons at the age of seven, sang in the church choir and occasionally played piano for rehearsals and services.

Vaughan developed an early love for popular music from listening to records and the radio. In the 1930s, Newark had a very active live music scene and Vaughan frequently saw local and touring bands. By her mid-teens, Vaughan began venturing into Newark's night clubs and performing as a pianist and, occasionally, singer, most notably at the Piccadilly Club and the Newark Airport USO.

Vaughan transferred to Newark Arts High School, which opened in 1931 as the first arts "magnet" high school in the U.S. Vaughan dropped out of high school during her junior year to concentrate more fully on music. Around this time, Vaughan and her friends also began venturing across the Hudson River into New York City to hear big bands at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Vaughan was frequently accompanied by a friend, Doris Robinson, on her trips into New York City. Sometime in the fall of 1942 (when Sarah was 18 years old), Vaughan suggested that Robinson enter the Apollo Amateur Night contest. Vaughan played piano accompaniment for Robinson, who won second prize. Vaughan later decided to go back and compete herself as a singer. Vaughan sang "Body and Soul" and won. The prize, was US$10 and the promise of a week's engagement at the Apollo. In the spring of 1943 she returned to the Apollo and opened for Ella Fitzgerald.

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Sometime during her week of performances at the Apollo, Vaughan was introduced to bandleader and pianist Earl Hines. After a brief tryout at the Apollo, Hines officially replaced his existing female singer with Vaughan on April 4, 1943.

Vaughan spent the remainder of 1943 and part of 1944 touring the country with the Earl Hines big band that also featured baritone Billy Eckstine. Band pianist John Malachi is credited with giving Vaughan the moniker "Sassy," a nickname that matched her personality.

Vaughan officially left the Eckstine band in late 1944 to pursue a solo career, although she remained very close to Eckstine personally and recorded with him frequently throughout her life.

Vaughan began her solo career in 1945 by freelancing in clubs on New York's 52nd Street. In May 1945, Vaughan recorded "Lover Man" for the Guild label. After being invited by violinist Stuff Smith to record the song "Time and Again" in October, Vaughan was offered a contract to record for the Musicraft label.

While at Cafe Society an integrated club in New York's Sheridan Square, Vaughan became friends with trumpeter George Treadwell. He became her manager, musical director, and later, her first husband. Many of Vaughan's 1946 Musicraft recordings became quite well-known among jazz aficionados and critics, including "If You Could See Me Now," "Don't Blame Me," "I've Got a Crush on You," "Everything I Have Is Yours" and "Body and Soul."

Vaughan's recording success for Musicraft continued through 1947 and 1948. Her recording of "Tenderly" became an unexpected pop hit in late 1947. Her December 27, 1947, recording of "It's Magic" found chart success in early 1948 as did her later recording that year of "Nature Boy." Her chart successes continued with the charting of "Black Coffee" in the summer of 1949.

Through 1953, Vaughan recorded mostly commercial pop ballads, a number of which had chart success: "That Lucky Old Sun," "Make Believe (You Are Glad When You're Sorry)," "I'm Crazy to Love You," "Our Very Own," "I Love the Guy," "Thinking of You", "I Cried for You," "These Things I Offer You," "Vanity," "I Ran All the Way Home," "Saint or Sinner," "My Tormented Heart," and "Time," among others.

Vaughan also achieved substantial critical acclaim. She won Esquire magazine's New Star Award for 1947 as well as awards from Down Beat magazine continuously from 1947 through 1952, and from Metronome magazine from 1948 through 1953.

In 1989, Vaughan's health began to decline. While performing at New York's Blue Note jazz club in 1989, Vaughan received a diagnosis of lung cancer and was too ill to finish the final day of what would turn out to be her final series of public performances.

Vaughan returned to her home in California to begin chemotherapy. She died on April 3, 1990, a week after her 66th birthday.

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Among her many honors, The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its "highest honor in jazz," the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.

Also, recordings of Sarah Vaughan were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

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March 27: Mariah Carey is 41 (or 42) today ...

... there have been various accounts for her year of birth.

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Did you know?
Carey was named after the song "They Call the Wind Mariah."

Her high school classmates gave Mariah the nickname "Mirage" because she was frequently absent because of her work as a demo singer for local recording studios.

Mariah  possesses a five-octave vocal range, and was ranked first in a 2003 MTV and Blender magazine countdown of the 22 Greatest Voices in Music, as voted by fans and readers in an online poll.

"I have nodules on my vocal cords," said Carey in 1998 interviews with Vibe Magazine and ShowBiz Spy. "My mother says I've had them since I was a kid. That's why I have the high register and the belting register and I can still be husky. My doctors showed me my vocal cords and why I can hit those high notes. It's a certain part of the cord that not many people use—the very top. My natural voice is low."

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In a career spanning over two decades, Carey has sold more than 200 million albums, singles and videos worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists.

Carey was cited as the world’s best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the 1998 World Music Awards and was also named the best-selling female artist of the millennium by the same organization in 2000.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the third-best-selling female artist, with shipments of 63 million albums. In 2008, Carey earned her eighteenth number one single on the Hot 100, the most by any solo artist. She has earned five Grammy Awards and is known for her five-octave vocal range, power and versatile and unique style.

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Mariah Carey was born in Huntington, Long Island, New York. Her mother is a former opera singer and vocal coach. Her paternal grandfather, Roberto Nuñez, changed his surname to Carey after moving to the U.S. from Venezuela.

After her parents' divorce, her mother worked several jobs to support the family and Mariah spent much of her time at home alone, and turned to music to occupy herself. She began to sing at around the age of three, when her mother began to teach her, after Carey imitated her mother practicing Verdi's opera Rigoletto in Italian.

Her work in the Long Island music scene provided opportunities to work with many professional musicians, who helped her co-write songs for her demo tape. After moving to New York City, she worked part-time jobs and completed 500 hours of beauty school. Eventually, she became a backup singer for Puerto Rican freestyle singer Brenda K. Starr.

In 1988, Carey met Columbia Records executive (and her first husband) Tommy Mottola at a party. After giving him her demo tape, Mottola played it after leaving the party and liked it Mottola tracked her down and signed her to a recording contract.

Carey co-wrote the tracks on her 1990 debut album Mariah Carey and she has co-written most of her material ever since. Critics were mostly positive and the album reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, where it remained for several weeks. It yielded four number-one singles and made Carey a star in the U. S.

Carey won Grammys for Best New Artist, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her debut single, "Vision of Love." Mariah Carey was also the best selling album of 1991 in the U.S.

Emotions, Carey's second album, was released soon after her debut album but was neither as critically or commercially successful. However, the title track "Emotions" made Carey into the only recording act whose first five singles have reached number one on the U.S. Hot 100 chart. (The album's follow-up singles failed to extend the streak.) Carey co-produced most of her material.

Although Carey performed live occasionally, stage fright prevented her from embarking on a major tour. Her first widely seen appearance was featured on the television show MTV Unplugged in 1992. Afterwards she remarked that her performance that night proved her vocal abilities were not, as some had previously speculated, simulated with studio equipment.

In 1997, she introduced elements of hip hop into her album work. After initial success, her popularity was in decline when she left Columbia, in 2001. She signed a record $80 million deal with Virgin Records, only to be dropped from the label and bought out of her contract in the following year.

The career downturn was largely due to the highly publicized physical and emotional breakdown, as well as the poor reception that was given to Glitter, her film and soundtrack project.

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In 2002, Carey signed with Island Records, and, after a relatively unsuccessful period, returned to the top of pop music, in 2005, with her 10th studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi.

The album earned a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album and the single "We Belong Together" won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song. "We Belong Together" held the Hot 100's number-one position for fourteen weeks, her longest run at the top as a solo lead artist.

The single from the album, "Shake It Off," reached number two for a week, which made Carey the first female lead vocalist to have simultaneously held the Hot 100's top two positions.

In spring 2007, she had begun to work on her eleventh studio album, E=MC². Two weeks before the album's release, in April 2008, "Touch My Body," her first single from the album, became Carey's eighteenth number-one single on the Hot 100, pushing her past Elvis Presley into second place ( behind only The Beatles) for the most number-one singles among all artists in the rock era.

Carey's singles have collectively topped the charts for seventy-nine weeks, making her the artist with the most weeks atop the Hot 100. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked her at number six on the "Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists," making Carey the second most successful female artist in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Mariah has also acted in films. In 2009, she appeared as a drab social worker in Precious.  In January 2010, Carey won the Breakthrough Actress Performance award for her role in Precious at the Palm Springs International Film Festival

Carey and husband, actor/comedian/rapper Nick Cannon are expecting twins in the spring of 2011.





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