Jazz critic Leonard Feather called her “the most important singer to emerge from the bop era.” Ella Fitzgerald called her the world’s “greatest singing talent.” During the course of a career that spanned nearly fifty years, she was the singer’s singer, influencing everyone from Mel Torme to Anita Baker. She was among the musical elite identified by their first names. She was Sarah, Sassy — the incomparable Sarah Vaughan.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924, Vaughan was immediately surrounded by music: her carpenter father was an amateur guitarist and her laundress mother was a church vocalist. Young Sarah studied piano from the age of seven, and before entering her teens had become an organist and choir soloist at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. When she was eighteen, friends dared her to enter the famed Wednesday Night Amateur Contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. She gave a sizzling rendition of “Body and Soul,” and won first prize. In the audience that night was the singer Billy Eckstine. Six months later, she had joined Eckstine in Earl Hines’s big band along with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

When Eckstine formed his own band soon after, Vaughan went with him. Others including Miles Davis and Art Blakey, were eventually to join the band as well. Within a year, however, Vaughan wanted to give a solo career a try. By late 1947, she had topped the charts with “Tenderly,” and as the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, Vaughan expanded her jazz repertoire to include pop music. As a result, she enlarged her audience, gained increased attention for her formidable talent, and compiled additional hits, including the Broadway show tunes “Whatever Lola Wants” and “Mr. Wonderful.” While jazz purists balked at these efforts, no one could deny that in any genre, Vaughan had one of the greatest voices in the business.

In the late 1960s, Vaughan returned to jazz music, performing and making regular recordings. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s she recorded with such jazz notables as Oscar Peterson, Louie Bellson, Zoot Sims, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Don Cherry, and J.J. Johnson. Her recordings of the “Duke Ellington Song Book (1 and 2)” are considered some of the finest recordings of the time. While for many years her signature song had been “Misty,” by the mid-70’s, she was closing every show with Sondheim’s “Bring In The Clowns.” In 1982, while in her late fifties, Vaughan won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocalist for her album, “Gershwin Live”!

While she continued to work without the massive commercial success enjoyed by colleagues such as Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, and Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan consistently retained a special place in the hearts of fellow musicians and audiences alike. She continually performed at top venues, playing to adoring sell-out crowds well into her sixties. Remarkably, unlike many singers, she lost none of her extraordinary talent as time went on. Her multi-octave range, with its swooping highs and sensual lows, and the youthful suppleness of her voice shaded by a luscious timbre and executed with fierce control, all remained intact. In 1990, at the age sixty-six, Sarah Vaughan passed away. Shortly after her death, Mel Torme summed up the feelings of all who had seen her, saying “She had the single best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field.”

Dorothy Fields was born and raised in New York, and began her career as a lyricist there. In a career that spanned five decades, she collaborated with some of the greats of the industry. With Jimmy McHugh she wrote “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and the anti-Depression classic “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” and with composer Jerome Kern she wrote the classic score for the film SWING TIME, which included “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight” (the song earned them both an Academy Award). Upbeat and witty, lyrics like those written with Cy Coleman for “Big Spender” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now” became instant classics.

Composer Kay Swift had her first hit at the age of thirty-four with the song, “Can’t We Be Friends.” A year later, in 1930, she wrote the entire score of the Broadway musical FINE AND DANDY, which ran for two hundred and thirty-six performances and whose title song continued to be performed long after. While writing scores for Radio City Music Hall productions, Swift met her second husband. He was a rancher at the 1939 World’s Fair where she was working as a music director. Her memoir of life on the ranch (called WHO COULD ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE) was eventually turned into the movie NEVER A DULL MOMENT (1950) starring Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray .

It was at that same World’s Fair where Dana Suesse’s “Yours for a Song,” became the theme song. A Missouri-born child prodigy, Suesse wrote symphonic music as well as popular songs. Orchestra leader Paul Whiteman commissioned her to write for him, and in 1932 (when she was twenty-one) presented her at Carnegie Hall playing her composition “Valses for Piano and Orchestra.” The New Yorker dubbed her “The Girl Gershwin,” because of her amazing sense of rhythm and style. She collaborated on a number of songs, writing the 1932 hit “My Silent Love,” with lyricist Ed Heyman, and “The Night Is Young and You’re So Beautiful” with Billy Rose.

Like Fields and Suesse and Swift, Ann Ronell wrote popular songs and musical theater, but she made her real mark in Hollywood. Ronell wrote both the music and lyrics for a number of hit songs including “Willow Weep for Me.” It could be argued, however, that her most famous was one that was written for a Disney cartoon: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Among her best work were motion picture scores for ONE TOUCH OF VENUS (1948), the Marx Brothers’ LOVE HAPPY (1949), and THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (1945) earning her two Academy Award nominations.

Throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, both Broadway and Hollywood were going through golden eras. These four women helped to shape those times. Their talents and love of music broke down barrier after barrier in a male-dominated industry, and paved the way for future generations of artists. Loved by millions, their work became a part of people’s daily lives, and they remain today significant figures in the history of popular music.