Elaine Hayes has had a passion for music since her first piano lesson at age seven and has, by her description, "spent a dozen years studying big band 'girl singers' and women in jazz." She has a doctorate in musicology from the University of Pennsylvania; taught multi-media courses in jazz, classical, and world music; spoken at national and international conferences; and discussed Sarah Vaughan on local and national radio, including NPR. Her most recent project: a biography of the vocalist Sarah Vaughan, titled Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan, was published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2017.