Sarah Vaughan, “Misty”, Live from Sweden, 1964
How is any human being even capable of singing that perfectly? I have no idea.
It sounds heavenly to me, in a literal sense, as in not of this Earth — and I’ll take it with graitude.
Studio recording, 1958
Lots of great singers probably heard this and thought “well, I know I’ll never be that good”.
Just for fun, acouple of voice teacher reaction videos — or how many ways can you say “this is perfection in a performance”?
The tone, the phrasing, the control, the emotion, it’s all in there. This is what mastery of a craft sounds like.
A voice teacher could literally play this song for a student and say “just try to copy what she’s doing ... that’ll be $200”.
Sarah Vaughan has lots of great music in her catalog, and if you like this one, you should check out her “This Is” playlist on your streaming service.
Clint Eastwood even made a classic movie — his debut as director — based on a late night radio host and his stalker, also very good, called “Play Misty For Me”. Here is the opening credits clip.