Apart from three seriously unsuitable husbands another negative in the life of Sarah Vaughan was the A&R men with whom she was lumbered at the start of and well into her career, who squandered her glorious four-octave voice on ephemeral jukebox fodder more than content with a 12-week shelf life. The result was that unlike contemporaneous female vocalists – Peggy Lee (Fever), Doris Day (Que Será, Será), Ella Fitzgerald (Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye) – Ms. Vaughan never really had much in the way of “signature” songs, coming closest with Tenderly and Serenata, both of which dropped off the radar relatively quickly, and Broken-Hearted Melody, which she dismissed as dross, albeit continuing to feature it in her live performances.
I mention all this because when I learned that Zara McFarlane was bringing a show, Sweet Whispers, subtitled A Celebration Of Sarah Vaughan, into Crazy Coqs, I was curious, nay, intrigued as to what examples from Vaughan’s 48-year career she would offer, ergo I asked the editor if I could cover the gig.
Were I an ordinary reader of Jazz Journal, and noticed a review centring on a female vocalist, the first thing I’d want to know would be is she any good? Can she sing the note before note #1? Does she know what to do with her hands? Is she worth hearing? Can she work an audience? Perm any two from five. The answer here is a resounding “yes” to all five. If she doesn’t quite have the best set of pipes since Pan gave up the day job, the ones she has will do until the real thing comes along and she clearly enjoys flaunting them, holding a top note à la Ethel Merman one minute, swooping down to the low register the next. In between numbers she chatted to the audience, completely at ease, as they were with her.
Her only accompaniment was pianist Alex Ho, who has been with her for a couple of years, and it’s fair to say that rather than singer and accompanist, this is more of a double act, in which Zara will sing a 32-bar chorus of a given song, and then Alex weighs in with 64 bars that bear no relation to anything laid down by Zara. Clearly frightened in infancy by Dave Brubeck’s block chords, he attacks each note as if wielding a jack hammer. If the SRO audience had a problem with this, they kept it to themselves, and applauded each solo with gusto.
To linger a tad longer on the downside, out of a round dozen numbers I was able to identify only two – Tenderly and If You Could See Me Now – that I could definitely associate with Sarah Vaughan, although it’s possible that at some stage Ms Vaughan performed and/or recorded such titles as Great Day, September Song and Mean To Me; again, does it really matter to anyone but a pedant? At least two of the titles, including Sweet Whispers, were the work of Ms McFarlane herself and thus, by definition, could not have been performed and/or recorded by Ms Vaughan.
I’d endured something of a nightmare journey to the venue, encountering no less than three major diversions on the drive, and then being obliged to walk the last furlong through a steady downpour, so that I didn’t take my seat in the best of moods. But when I say that within eight bars of the opening number my mood lifted, that should give some indication of the calibre of the entertainment Ms McFarlane laid on us.
Zara McFarlane at Crazy Coqs, 20 Sherwood St, London W1F 7ED, 6 March 2026
