Sarah Vaughan Birthplace — Newark, New Jersey

Sarah Lois Vaughan was born on March 27, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, to musical parents who encouraged her to sing in the choir of Mount Zion Baptist Church. In 1942, at the age of eighteen, she won the amateur night contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem — the same night Ella Fitzgerald had won years earlier — singing "Body and Soul." Billy Eckstine heard her and brought her to the attention of Earl Hines, in whose big band she became a featured vocalist alongside Eckstine and a young Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. She was immediately in the orbit of bebop's birth.

Vaughan's voice was a phenomenon — a three-and-a-half-octave range, perfect intonation, extraordinary control of vibrato, and a chromatic sophistication that let her navigate bebop harmonies with the ease of an instrumentalist. Jazz musicians called her "the Divine One" with genuine reverence. Her recordings from the 1950s — "Misty," "Lullaby of Birdland," "Whatever Lola Wants" — are considered definitive interpretations. She recorded prolifically in both jazz and pop settings throughout her career, never quite receiving the mainstream commercial recognition her talent warranted.

Newark has embraced Vaughan as one of its most significant cultural exports, alongside performers like Connie Francis, Queen Latifah, and Whitney Houston. A plaza and street bear her name in Newark. She spent much of her later life in California and died in Hidden Hills on April 3, 1990, from lung cancer. She was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989.