Sarah Vaughan “Trouble can sit right on my shoulder” first day covers

A virtuoso vocalist with a four-octave range, Sarah Vaughan's professional vocal career spanned nearly half a century. She disliked being pigeonholed as a "jazz singer", famously saying that "What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music."

Numerous music critics, as well as professional musicians with whom she worked, believed that, with proper training, she could have been amongst the world's greatest opera singers. Instead, her eclectic musicianship took her from genre to genre of contemporary music, lending a depth and complexity to every performance she undertook. She died in 1990 at the age of 66, leaving a copious discography that continues to delight longtime fans and garner new ones.

For these covers, I tinted a photograph of Vaughan and gave it a sultry, smoky effect to suggest a dark jazz club. I accompanied the photo with a memorable quote about her immersive experience of music: "When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don't even notice."