top of page
Search
  • Writer's pictureladiesvoices

Fabulous Friday: Vaughan and Fitzgerald, "The Sh of Your Sm"

I was going to use this Sarah Vaughan performance of "The Shadow of Your Smile" as my example for the Diva/Mensch post on Wednesday, but it didn't make sense of have this High Diva performance by Miss Vaughan when the song was being the Mensch. Tony Bennett was the perfect choice, the ultimate Mensch of the American Song.


She really is a jazz instrumentalist whose instrument is her voice. The proof is in the first moment - - she holds the word "The" for a long time. I don't believe Ella Fitzgerald would do that, because her singing is rooted in the words in a deeper way. Sarah Vaughan brushes the words away if she has something more inventive to do with the music.


Here's Miss Vaughan and her fabulous eye makeup.



And lookie here - - Ella Fitzgerald doing the song. As expected, the word "The" leads directly to the next word without any lingering. Of course Fitzgerald was shoe-horned into an arrangement with a full orchestra in a studio session to cut a single, unlike Vaughan, who was working live with a trio in a concert. But still...




7 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Composer David Del Tredici died the other day at the age of 86. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1980 for "In Memory of a Summer Day," part one of Child Alice. He wrote many pieces inspired by A

The Best Actress winner for 2000 was Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich. That performance was a beguiling mixture of diva and mensch so instead I'm going to focus on two other Best Acrtess nominees tha

bottom of page