Chicagoan Vera Sanford was 25 in 1964, when she switched careers to go from legal secretary to vocalist under the auspices of her boss, Earl Washington. He was a local trial attorney and music lover, but after listening to one of her audition discs, he decided to launch a record label (Bombay) to introduce her to the music scene. Within a few months of releasing her album "Ten Minutes to Midnight," Vera was being hailed as a new singing sensation, and when she auditioned for the NBC Johnny Carson Show in New York, bandleader Skitch Henderson, paying her the highest praise, declared: “She’s a cross between Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.”

—Jordi Pujol (From the back-liner notes of FSRV 131)