George Benson Quartet - It's Uptown (Columbia, 1965)

Here's a nice album of early George Benson in a mostly straight ahead jazz style but with a couple vocal tracks thrown in to round it out. Honestly, the vocal tracks are the highlights for me here, but that's not to say the instrumental tracks are anything short of excellent. The playing is superb as you'd expect but I found a few of the arrangements to be pretty stock. It is, at any rate, a good listen. Check out the great version of Summertime below and grab the rest here if it's up your alley.

Sarah Vaughan - A Time In My Life (Mainstream, 1971)

Here's a neat Sarah Vaughan record from the early seventies. It's mostly fairly uptempo but there's some mellow numbers too. That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be is I think my fave cut. Usually I want to put my favourite tune as the preview track but this time I'm going for a shorter track just for a taste. On Thinking It Over is the second song on the album and it's a beauty.

Boomp3.com

If that strikes your fancy then you should peep the rest of it here. 320k rip from my original Mainstream vinyl.

Here is what they say about this LP at Dusty Groove:
Sarah Vaughn's looking pretty groovy on the cover of this album, and she's sounding pretty groovy too -- thanks to some sweet 70s backings from Ernie Wilkins! The style isn't exactly funky, but it's got some fully soulful sounds, and some great electric moments too -- modes that almost feel more like some of the best Kudu Records vocal sets from the time, instead of the usual Mainstream Records groove. Sarah really fits well in this sort of setting -- stretching out into groovier territory than before with the same sense of change that Ella Fitzgerald or Marlena Shaw were bringing to their music at the time. Players include Jerome Richardson on saxes, Buddy Childers on trumpet, Benny Powell on trombone, Jimmy Cobb on percussion, and Earl Palmer on drums -- and titles include "Inner City Blues", "Magical Connection", "Universal Prisoner", "Tomorrow City", "That's The Way I've Always Heard It", "Imagine", "On Thinking It Over", and "If Not For You".