Send In the Clowns: The Very Best of Sarah Vaughan

The Very Best of Sarah Vaughan? There's respectable music on the 13 tracks selected for this compilation, Send in the Clowns: The Very Best of Sarah Vaughan, but no knowledgeable jazz fan would find that an accurate label. Considering her recording career spanned more than 40 years, the selections cover ridiculously fragmentary slices of her body of work for something bearing a "very best of" title. There are just two cuts predating the early '70s ("Black Coffee" and "Vanity," from the late '40s and early '50s); most of the rest was done between 1972 and 1974, with three '80s recordings closing the disc. Nor would many fans consider her mainstream pop cover of "Send in the Clowns" a Vaughan highlight. Though not as unpalatable, her live 1982 cover of "I've Got a Crush on You/Foggy Day," and the two cuts from her 1987 Brazilian Romance album, likewise are hardly close to the most essential tracks she laid down. Otherwise, the material's taken from live 1973 Tokyo performances and her lushly orchestrated 1972 Sarah Vaughan with Michel Legrand record. There are, of course, some good songs on this disc, and excellent vocals from Vaughan on most of the numbers. Just know that it's probably not going to fulfill your expectations of her very best work. Also note that the liner notes are exceptionally brief, though they still manage to misprint her birthdate as 1964 instead of 1924.