" data-original-title="" title="">Sarah Vaughan to songwriter Randy Newman. When I was singing musical theater my voice coaches were Carol and Ed Locke. They were the best and when I couldn't afford the lessons, they taught me anyway. Great people who knew the human voice backwards and forwards.

I knew I wanted to be a musician when...
I sang and danced "Carolina in the Morning" with my friend Sandy for a Brownie banquet when I was five.

Your sound and approach to music:
My sound changed after I blew my throat out singing disco six nights a week. After surgery on my vocal cords, I went from being a coloratura soprano with lots of vibrato to a rich alto with almost no vibrato. My approach to music is to listen to as much as you can (that's nothing new)—for singers, you have to know hundreds of songs and that only comes from heavy absorption of the American songbook. And you have to know your way around a piano, even a little bit, to enhance your knowledge of what's going on around you when you're singing.

Your teaching approach:
I don't teach music. I teach history. But I guess my philosophy would be the same -to understand a moment in time, one must comprehend the context. For example, just listening to Billie Holiday's voice late in her career is not enough, you need to know what had happened to her in life. Just like