SELECTION: Photograph
Brazilian Romance is Sarah Vaughan’s last studio album in which she performs solo, save for guest artist Milton Nescimento’s Portugese inserts on “Love and Passion.” Quite a few press reviews maligned it when released in 1987, carping the “Divine One” was over the hill, assigning additional blame for their dissatisfaction to the fractious recording sessions with volatile Sarah battling producer Sergio Mendes over concept and her jazzy ostinato proclivities. We the public, like the critics, could believe she’s both pleading and venting in some lyrics for the slightly minacious “Obsession”—“all those silver clouds in my eyes make me believe you are a blessing when you are a curse in disguise.” Sergio may well be the rare musician, perhaps like Tony Bennett, in seemingly perpetual joy but he too had bad days, having fired his entire and popular Brasil ’66 ensemble, including Lani Hall, over complaints their accommodations on the road were sleazy. (Dating and eventually marrying Herb Alpert, Lani was wisely reinstated, along with better lodging.) As arranger of Brazilian Romance, and a huge contributor to Lani’s 1998 Brasil Nativo, legendary Dori Caymmi alludes to larger issues: “There was a basic mistake with the production. I don’t want to mention names, but the producers were all thinking pop while I was thinking jazz. Recording in the pop vein was shortsighted, a real disservice. The approach for a first class vocalist like Sarah Vaughan is nothing less than…Sarah Vaughan. Anyway, there was this misconception, which made her very difficult to work with, and to further complicate things, she was making this album for CBS without permission from Quincy Jones, who held her contract at Qwest.”
Except that her instrument, no longer maintaining a first rate classiness, and possible legal skirmishes with Jones, on top of the contretemps related to the album’s vocal and orchestral direction, were acknowledged by those “producers” from CBS-Columbia as financial overseers. Columbia’s earlier scant, stingy and probably discriminatory history with Sarah also seeped into the mix: releasing her first solo album back in 1950, the company let her go after she had the nerve to complain about the lousy commercial material she was expected to record, then issued two compilations in 1955 of her previously unreleased recordings it still held rights to and from which she collected pittanc; then in 1982, attempting reconciliation, produced the extravagantly unnecessary Gershwin Live! album. Sarah had troubles beyond repetitive selection, such as vanity, a litigious demeanor and privately-held (but publicly suspected) health concerns: her declining vocal powers were accelerating due to lung cancer caused by excessive smoking; arthritis in the hand (later to be diagnosed as carcinoma); long-term drinking, cocaine and marijuana use. Reportedly being frequently as well as intentionally late for the recording sessions of Brazilian Romance and often leaving early in a huff, tempers flared as costs of studios, musicians and transportation to L. A., Detroit and Rio mounted. The arguments between Sarah and Sergio over approaches to the material started in rehearsals and proceeded to get heated during taping, with Sergio, in headphones, stopping the recording process any time he’d hear displacing languorous slushiness or scat she’d try to sneak in to get her way. She wanted interpretive freedom, he wanted restraint; the compromises, within the accompanying arrangements of effusiveness leaning more toward expensive Rio-esque romanticism than hard core Brazilian parameters Sergio felt she couldn’t vocally achieve, can be heard at the end of a number of songs, especially at variance with her best and unusually short track “Photograph.”
Eruptions and resentments from the warring sides would suggest underlining incompatibility, but after her successful pop albums I Love Brazil and Copacabana, which present her renderings on Sergio’s “Like a Lover,” “Empty Faces” and “Pra Dizer Adeus,” she wanted to do a third, and specifically include his “So Many Stars,” wishing to create another signature with the impact of her version of “Send in the Clowns.” In point of fact, Sarah and Sergio mutually agreed on each other as a team, with the latter savoring the opportunity to work with the legend. And “So Many Stars” had music written by Sergio and lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, considered a timeless classic recorded by Lani at the age of 20 for the Brasil ’66 Look Around. The packaging of desire and emotions surging in and Dave Grusin’s orchestrations of the song epitomized 60s ultra-sophisticated ballad, heard during “last call” at many urban watering holes. With Columbia’s money, all the imported talent in support and Sergio supervising, Sarah was at first convinced the gig would be a breeze. She wasn’t, however, fully apprised of Sergio as taskmaster: consistently referred to as a drill sergeant, he doesn’t suffer divas at the expense of an unsaleable performance. He is, though, appreciated for compensating voices not in their prime; he knew Sarah’s wasn’t in 1987 and still took the assignment. Tailoring the 10 tracks to her strengths, allowing limited wallow but no wailing, he accorded her version of “So Many Stars” and, like Streisand’s later rendition with equally lenghty introductory foreplay, she’s husky with conviction turning into melancholic longing—one of the reasons the number attracts long-established singers. Either willingly or through obedience she’s in control with soulfulness, much more appealing than most of her live singing of the song on Youtube. (Having been nominated for a Grammy for the album, she was invited to sing the song at the show—also available on YouTube—delivering a version substantially closer to what she wanted to record,) If “So Many Stars” is really about the search for the next fuck, it requires some finagling when singing as remembrances of trysts past; Sarah finagles quite nicely.
Melancholy over “what we might have been” is the fitting subject of “Photograph,” which sequentially follows “So Many Stars” and written by Caymmi, Tracy Mann and Paulo César Pinheiro. She’s poignant and hurting, aided by an opening gush of George Duke’s light fingers stardust. In fact, all the tracks open as inviting avenues leading to channelized articulation and modulation delivered in her earned imperfection. Instead of absolution, the critics wrote as if in sudden discovery and shock that Sarah’s “voice was shot”—sexism from predominantly males who ignored the diminution of Sinatra and Bennett, excusing them as consummate artists of style while gleefully picking at her scabs, ninnyhammering “her octave scale and vibrato have, after forty years, unfortunately atrophied.” They complained her celebrated scat was absent and on this heavily modified concept album the selections don’t include Sergio’s under-appreciated specialty of melodic Brazilian nonsense syllables, which is a regret. But at 63 when recording, as if to make up for the “free-falls” from her “divinity,” she has throaty realness—a vocal suppuration—discharged in Dori’s complex (virtually curlicue) arrangements of story-telling, while Sergio’s discipline brings to the fore her almost masculine command of multiple lyrics, as in “Love and Passion,” and gently dabs her oozing fluctuations, flourishes and foibles. Listening to the word profusions, we know why she didn’t sing most of the album numbers in concerts—she’d have to read the sheets.
Having died from lung cancer only three years after Brazilian Romance, Sarah probably didn’t resolve whatever embranglements resulting from clashes: in one of her live performances of “So Many Stars” she quizzes the crowd if it’s aware of the album’s release—the people sat in silence, confirming Columbia wasn’t spending much on a national push—and she namelessly if lamely mocks Sergio about the spelling of Brazil as a reminder she remained acerbated. There’s no kiss-and-tell from her nemesis. Yet stress can and often does achieve surprising accomplishment, even if it takes almost forty decades to be fairly credited. Wrapping her dissipated yo-yo voice in deluxe tropical trappings courtesy Dori’s guitar, Duke’s pianissimo, Hubert Laws’s flute, Carlos Vega’s drums, Paulinho Da Costa’s percussion, Marcio Montarrovos’s flugelhorn and trumpet, Chuck Domanico and Alphonso Johnson’s bass, Tom Scott and Ernie Watts’s potent sax, and all under persevering Sergio’s engineered blending, Brazilian Romance earns its right to reappraisal as Sarah’s bittersweet kiss-off. Aqui está para você, Cadela!
Text COPYRIGHT © Ralph Benner 2020 (Revised 7/2026) All Rights Reserved.