Sarah Vaughan had the sort of voice that compels you to listen. Consider how rare that is. We listen to music while driving, cooking or cleaning. We use it as motivation to exercise and background to ...

Born in 1924 in Newark, N.J., Vaughan came up in the '40s, alongside bebop, a new jazz style she instantly took to. In the following decades, she proved to be one of the best singers of any genre.

She began studying music when she was seven, taking eight years of piano lessons and two years of organ. As a child she sang in the choir at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Newark and played piano and ...