After a five year break, she returned to recording in 1971, this time with Norman Granz's Pablo label. Granz made many sessions with Vaughan through the '70s, some excellent, others not so good. She made a Duke Ellington Songbook, worked with Count Basie and Oscar Peterson and even did an album of Afro-Latin and Brazilian material. There was a marvelous two-record live set recorded in Japan. Her health worsened in the '80s, but she recorded an album of Gershwin songs with The Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1982 and an interesting concept/vocal album The Planet is Alive..Let It Live! in 1985 on Gene Lees Jazzletter label. This was an album of poems by Pope John Paul II adapted by Lees with music by Tito Fontana and Sante Palumbo. It featured Vaughan's vocals backed by an orchestra that included such jazz veterans as Art Farmer, Benny Bailey and Sahib Shihab. When Vaughan died in 1990, there were tributes and worldwide outpourings of grief. Her albums are being steadily reissued, from the formative '40s dates to the '70s sets. Mercury has issued the mammoth Complete Sarah Vaughan On Mercury collection, which breaks down her career at the label into eras with multi-disc packages for each period. The songbooks have been reissued, and Columbia has a two-disc package of material from the late '40s and early '50s. Single album reissues are also available from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. ~ Ron Wynn and Dan Morgenstern
Source: AMG Biography