Sarah Vaughan - Crazy and Mixed Up (Limited edition)

Crazy and Mixed Up is the first album where Sarah Vaughan produced herself, and it might be the best record she ever made for Pablo.

By 1982, Vaughan had been singing professionally for almost forty years, dating back to the days of Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine's 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 him a Grammy nomination, which seems almost anecdotal.

Autumn Leaves is the performance that people still debate, Vaughan transforming a standard that everyone had heard a thousand times before into something almost unrecognizable, phrasing so far behind the beat that 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 around her, and The Island floats on a bossa melody that suits her lower register perfectly.

Mastered by Matthew Lutthans from the original analogue tape, pressed at QRP, housed in a Stoughton sleeve. A voice like this deserves this care.

List of titles 

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