Sarah Vaughan - Crazy and Mixed Up (Limited Edition)

Crazy and Mixed Up is Sarah Vaughan producing herself for the first time, and it may be the finest record she ever made for Pablo.

By 1982 Vaughan had been singing professionally for nearly forty years, since the days of the Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine bands, and she had precisely nothing left to prove to anyone. So she took the producer's chair, hired a quartet of people she trusted completely, Roland Hanna on piano, Joe Pass on guitar, Andy Simpkins on bass, Harold Jones on drums, and made a record entirely on her own terms. It earned her a Grammy nomination, which almost feels beside the point.

Autumn Leaves is the performance people still argue about, Vaughan bending a standard everyone had already heard a thousand times into something almost unrecognisable, phrasing so far behind the beat it should collapse and never does. That's All is delivered with a tenderness she rarely allowed herself, You Are Too Beautiful lets Hanna and Pass hold the space open around her, and The Island floats on a bossa lilt that suits her lower register perfectly.

Mastered by Matthew Lutthans from the original analogue tape, pressed at QRP, housed in a Stoughton tip-on jacket. A voice like this deserves the fuss.

Tracklist 

Side A 

1. I Didn't Know What Time It Was
2. That's All
3. Autumn Leaves
4. Love Dance

Side B

1. The Island
2. Seasons
3. In Love In Vain
4. You Are Too Beautiful