This European compilation contains most of the studio recordings Sarah Vaughan participated in during her first two years as a recording artist, 1944-1946. It begins with a scratchy performance of "I'll Wait and Pray" by the Billy Eckstine Orchestra, which at the time featured Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, and Art Blakey, originally released on De Luxe Records. This is followed by Vaughan's first session as a leader, at which she is accompanied by a septet including Gillespie, Georgie Auld, and Leonard Feather, recorded for Continental Records. Gillespie's All Star Quintet featuring Charlie Parker and Sid Catlett follows with the title track for Guild, then another Gillespie septet with Parker and Max Roach for Continental. The recording of "All Too Soon" by Tony Scott & His Down Beat Club Septet, featuring Gillespie and Ben Webster, is out of order and incorrectly dated; it took place on March 6, 1946, not in 1945. Vaughan's version of "Time and Again" with the Stuff Smith Trio marks her Musicraft Records debut, but she does sessions with the John Kirby Orchestra for Crown and with Dicky Wells' Big Seven for HRS before returning to Musicraft with the Auld Orchestra to cut "A Hundred Years from Today" on April 30, 1946, and, a week later, a four-song session with the Tadd Dameron Orchestra. It is at this point that the CD begins to be selective with Vaughan's discography, omitting "You're Not the Kind." Vaughan returns to the studio on June 14, 1946 with the Auld band to cut "You're Blase," and again on July 18 for a full four-song session with an orchestra led by her future husband George Treadwell, of which, unfortunately, only "I'm Through with Love" and "Body and Soul" have been included. Similarly, the album uses only "Don't Worry 'Bout Me" from the two-song session on August 19, 1946, with a Teddy Wilson octet. It concludes with "Time After Time" and "September Song," recorded with a Wilson quartet on November 19, 1946. The Sarah Vaughan of these early sessions is a revelation, employing a rich tone with phrasing far more flexible than it would be later in her career. In fact, it is the relative lack of mannerisms that makes these performances, as vocal works, so impressive. Of course, the accompaniments are often stunning in themselves. (The sound quality of the tracks, which presumably were mastered from records, is sometimes only fair.) ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
