Sarah Vaughan - Complete Sarah Vaughan Masters 1954 - 1956 (2026) [Hi-Res]

Complete Sarah Vaughan Masters 1954 – 1956 is a five-disc anthology issued in 2026 by the French label BD Music as part of its program of historical reissues built around recordings that have entered the European public domain under the EU's neighbouring-rights regime. The Paris-based publisher specialises in illustrated compilations devoted to the central jazz, blues, and classical figures of the twentieth century, with audio restoration carried out at Studio Art et Son and editorial supervision provided by musicologists such as Claude Carrière (honorary president of the Académie du Jazz) and Christian Bonnet.
The program covers Sarah Vaughan's first two and a half years in the Mercury Records orbit and its jazz subsidiary EmArcy — the stretch widely regarded as her artistic peak. In 1954 the singer, already a bebop-tested star with a Columbia contract behind her, signed to Mercury under an unusual dual arrangement: "light" pop sessions for the parent imprint and serious jazz dates for EmArcy. That duality shapes the anthology's architecture, juxtaposing intimate quartet sessions (Jimmy Jones, John Malachi, or Ronnell Bright on piano; Joe Benjamin on bass; Roy Haynes on drums) with Hal Mooney's string-orchestra ballad dates, pop numbers conducted by Hugo Peretti and David Carroll, and the marquee sessions — the December 1954 summit with trumpeter Clifford Brown (who would die in a car accident eighteen months later) and the October 1955 In the Land of Hi-Fi dates with a young Cannonball Adderley.
By this point Vaughan's voice has reached full maturity. Operatic in range, capable of pivoting in an instant from gravelly to silken, it holds a near-instrumental phrasing honed across the previous decade of bebop collaboration. The anthology contains her canonical readings of "Lullaby of Birdland," "April in Paris," "Body and Soul," "My Funny Valentine," "Tenderly," "Lush Life" — one of the most finely weighted accounts of the Billy Strayhorn ballad ever committed to tape — "How High the Moon," "My Romance," the Rodgers & Hart, Gershwin, Weill, and Kern Broadway standards drawn from Great Songs from Hit Shows, and the scat showcase "Shulie a Bop," a signature of her jazz manner. BD Music's edition offers a convenient single-package gateway to nearly the entire studio corpus from one of the strongest years of Vaughan's career, sparing the listener the hunt for the original six-disc PolyGram box of the mid-1980s.

Tracklist:
1-1 Sarah Vaughan - My Funny Valentine [2:58]
1-2 Sarah Vaughan - Imagination [2:56]
1-3 Sarah Vaughan - It's Easy To Remember [2:46]
1-4 Sarah Vaughan - Easy Come, Easy Go Lover [2:45]
1-5 Sarah Vaughan - My One And Only Love [2:47]
1-6 Sarah Vaughan - I Still Believe In You [2:40]
1-7 Sarah Vaughan - Come Along With Me [2:11]
1-8 Sarah Vaughan - And This Is My Beloved [3:01]
1-9 Sarah Vaughan - Shulie A Bop [2:40]
1-10 Sarah Vaughan - Lover Man (2nd version) [3:17]
1-11 Sarah Vaughan - I Cried For You [1:41]
1-12 Sarah Vaughan - Polka Dots And Moonbeams [2:35]
1-13 Sarah Vaughan - All Of Me [3:16]
1-14 Sarah Vaughan - Words Can't Describe [4:33]
1-15 Sarah Vaughan - Prelude To A Kiss [2:47]
1-16 Sarah Vaughan - You Hit The Spot [3:02]
1-17 Sarah Vaughan - Pennies From Heaven [3:06]
1-18 Sarah Vaughan - If I Knew Then [2:31]
1-19 Sarah Vaughan - Body And Soul (2nd version) [3:13]
1-20 Sarah Vaughan - They Can't Take That Away From Me [2:42]
1-21 Sarah Vaughan - You'll Find Me There [2:40]
1-22 Sarah Vaughan - That's Not The Kind Of Love I Want [2:15]
1-23 Sarah Vaughan - Gone Again [2:39]
1-24 Sarah Vaughan - It's Love [2:04]
1-25 Sarah Vaughan - Padre [2:39]
1-26 Sarah Vaughan - Leave It To Love [2:44]
1-27 Sarah Vaughan - The Next Time Aound [2:48]
1-28 Sarah Vaughan - Please Mr Brown [2:15]
1-29 Sarah Vaughan - Hot And Cold Runnin' Tears [2:10]
2-1 Sarah Vaughan - The Touch Of Your Lips [2:48]
2-2 Sarah Vaughan - S'Wonderful [2:31]
2-3 Sarah Vaughan - Tenderly [3:11]
2-4 Sarah Vaughan - It's Magic [3:12]
2-5 Sarah Vaughan - Honey [2:20]
2-6 Sarah Vaughan - Let's Pull Out The Lights [2:42]
2-7 Sarah Vaughan - I'm In The Mood For Love [3:42]
2-8 Sarah Vaughan - I Don't Know Why [2:56]
2-9 Sarah Vaughan - Paradise [2:54]
2-10 Sarah Vaughan - Time On My Hands [3:32]
2-11 Sarah Vaughan - Gimme A Little Kiss [2:35]
2-12 Sarah Vaughan - Make Yourself Comfortable [2:41]
2-13 Sarah Vaughan - Mr Wonderful [2:50]
2-14 Sarah Vaughan - I Wanna Play House [2:04]
2-15 Sarah Vaughan - Oh Yeah [2:51]
2-16 Sarah Vaughan - Whatever Lola Wants [2:38]
2-17 Sarah Vaughan - The Other Woman [2:15]
2-18 Sarah Vaughan - Experience Unnecessary [2:51]
2-19 Sarah Vaughan - Johnny, Be Smart [2:17]
2-20 Sarah Vaughan - Old Devil Moon [2:33]
2-21 Sarah Vaughan - Idle Gossip [2:42]
2-22 Sarah Vaughan - Saturday [2:28]
2-23 Sarah Vaughan - Hey Naughty Papa [2:17]
2-24 Sarah Vaughan - You're My Everything [2:53]
2-25 Sarah Vaughan - Can't We Be Friends [3:25]
2-26 Sarah Vaughan - If I Loved You [3:30]
2-27 Sarah Vaughan - It's Delovely [2:45]
2-28 Sarah Vaughan - The Bashful Matador [2:31]
3-1 Sarah Vaughan - Lullaby Of Birdland [4:00]
3-2 Sarah Vaughan - April In Paris [6:21]
3-3 Sarah Vaughan - He's My Guy [4:12]
3-4 Sarah Vaughan - Jim [5:51]
3-5 Sarah Vaughan - You're Not The Kind [4:44]
3-6 Sarah Vaughan - Embraceable You [4:50]
3-7 Sarah Vaughan - I'm Glad There Is You [5:10]
3-8 Sarah Vaughan - September Song (2nd version) [5:45]
3-9 Sarah Vaughan - It's Crazy [4:57]
3-10 Sarah Vaughan - It Happened Again [2:30]
3-11 Sarah Vaughan - You Ought To Have A Wife [2:26]
3-12 Sarah Vaughan - Slowly With Feeling [2:45]
3-13 Sarah Vaughan - Exactly Like You [2:20]
3-14 Sarah Vaughan - How Important Can It Be [2:28]
3-15 Sarah Vaughan - Fabulous Character [2:42]
3-16 Sarah Vaughan - C'est La Vie [2:35]
3-17 Sarah Vaughan - Never [2:30]
3-18 Sarah Vaughan - The Edge Of The Sea [2:46]
3-19 Sarah Vaughan - Waltzing Down The Aisle [2:18]
3-20 Sarah Vaughan - Don't Let Me Love You [2:24]
3-21 Sarah Vaughan - The Second Time [2:50]
4-1 Sarah Vaughan - Over The Rainbow [3:30]
4-2 Sarah Vaughan - Soon [2:37]
4-3 Sarah Vaughan - Cherokee [2:31]
4-4 Sarah Vaughan - I'll Never Smile Again [2:35]
4-5 Sarah Vaughan - Don't Be On The Outside [3:01]
4-6 Sarah Vaughan - How High The Moon [2:37]
4-7 Sarah Vaughan - It Shoudn't Happen To A Dream [3:19]
4-8 Sarah Vaughan - Sometimes I'm Happy [2:56]
4-9 Sarah Vaughan - Maybe [2:32]
4-10 Sarah Vaughan - An Occasional Man [2:32]
4-11 Sarah Vaughan - Why Can't I [2:55]
4-12 Sarah Vaughan - Oh My [2:23]
4-13 Sarah Vaughan - Lush Life [4:02]
4-14 Sarah Vaughan - I'm The Girl [2:59]
4-15 Sarah Vaughan - Shake Down The Stars [2:49]
4-16 Sarah Vaughan - I've Got Some Crying To Do [2:54]
4-17 Sarah Vaughan - My Romance [3:16]
4-18 Sarah Vaughan - I Loved Him [3:23]
4-19 Sarah Vaughan - Lonely Woman [3:02]
4-20 Sarah Vaughan - I'm Afraid The Masquerade Is Over [3:31]
4-21 Sarah Vaughan - The Boy Next Door [2:56]
4-22 Sarah Vaughan - Old Folks [3:17]
4-23 Sarah Vaughan - Only You Can Say [3:00]
4-24 Sarah Vaughan - A Sinner Kissed An Angel [3:41]
5-1 Sarah Vaughan - A Tree In The Park [2:41]
5-2 Sarah Vaughan - Little Girl Blue [3:50]
5-3 Sarah Vaughan - Comes Love [2:31]
5-4 Sarah Vaughan - But Not For Me [3:26]
5-5 Sarah Vaughan - My Darling, My Darling [3:20]
5-6 Sarah Vaughan - Lucky In Love [1:54]
5-7 Sarah Vaughan - Autumn In New York [3:18]
5-8 Sarah Vaughan - It Never Entered My Mind [3:40]
5-9 Sarah Vaughan - If This Isn't Love [2:11]
5-10 Sarah Vaughan - The Touch Of Your Hand [2:17]
5-11 Sarah Vaughan - Homework [3:14]
5-12 Sarah Vaughan - Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered [3:29]
5-13 Sarah Vaughan - Dancing In The Dark [2:36]
5-14 Sarah Vaughan - September Song (3rd version) [3:03]
5-15 Sarah Vaughan - A Ship Without A Sail [3:25]
5-16 Sarah Vaughan - Lost In The Stars [3:38]
5-17 Sarah Vaughan - It's Got To Be Love [2:26]
5-18 Sarah Vaughan - All The Things You Are [3:10]
5-19 Sarah Vaughan - Poor Butterfly [3:31]
5-20 Sarah Vaughan - Let's Take An Old Fashioned Walk [2:24]
5-21 Sarah Vaughan - My Heart Stood Still [3:01]
5-22 Sarah Vaughan - He's Only Wonderful [3:19]
5-23 Sarah Vaughan - They Say It's Wonderful [2:59]
5-24 Sarah Vaughan - My Ship [2:54]