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.

Whatever else you want to say about Sarah Vaughan, she was an artist of extremes, and often of contradictions. She was born with a voice that, if not for the color of her skin in her generation, would ...