Sarah Vaughan: If You Could See Me Now

A year after recording with Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker, the finest singer of the bebop era had already turned her back on bop. This track, written by bopper Tadd Dameron, backed by such bop luminaries as big-toned trumpeter Freddie Webster, Bud Powell and Kenny Clarke, is musically aloof from bop. Rather, it anticipates the gooey ballads that made Miss Vaughan a staple of the 1950s hit parade. Technically the most gifted vocalist ever associated with jazz, the Divine One kept the genre at arm's length, going so far as to apprise Down Beat in 1982: "I'm not a jazz singer." Hearing this track, we wonder if she ever was.