Sarah Vaughan: Live at Rosy's

Sarah, the Divine One, is clearly having a grand time, swooping octaves, holding whole notes with a velvet vibrato, turning ballads into vamps, vamps into speed-fests, and sometimes playing songs straight and level too. She also shows great comic flair. Check out when she calls for requests from the audience and hears back "A-Tisket A-Tasket" (from someone apparently confusing her with Ella Fitzgerald, who'd made a huge hit of the song 40 years earlier), prompting Vaughan to deadpan, "Well, I'll be damned . . . He thinks I'm Lena Horne," then to dive into the tune anyway, in a dead-on impression of Ella's little-girl voice of way back then.

Mainly she sings her long repertoire of standards: "I'll Remember April," "I Fall in Love Too Easily," "East of the Sun," "Time After Time," and, of course, "Send in the Clowns," which I've never heard any Broadway star sing more movingly.

This ranks right up there with the best Sarah Vaughan albums from this period.

"Vaughan’s late-’70s vocal gifts are fully exposed on “Sarah Vaughan: Live at Rosy’s”, a newly released album. Recorded on May 31, 1978, at a New Orleans jazz club, the album features previously unreleased material as well as tracks heard only once during a live radio broadcast.

On the recording, Vaughan works her way through 21 songs backed by her trio — pianist Carl Schroeder, bassist Walter Booker and drummer Jimmy Cobb. Thirteen days later, Vaughan married trumpeter Waymon Reed, who became her manager and musical director.

The new album is notable for its sterling sound and unexpected surprises. There’s a “Fever”-paced “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)” with just Vaughan and bassist Booker. There’s also a “Fascinating Rhythm” that sounds as if Vaughan is jumping Double Dutch with the musicians swinging the ropes. But the album’s high point is “Time After Time,” when Vaughan’s voice sweeps down at the end and then climbs the final chord’s notes to falsetto heights.

Among the album’s other highlights are contemporary songs of the 1960s and ’70s, including Michel Legrand’s “Watch What Happens,” Marcos Valle’s “If You Went Away,” Benard Ighner’s “Everything Must Change,” and “A Lot of Livin’ to Do” from “Bye, Bye Birdie.”