‘Whatever Lola Wants’ is a popular song, sometimes rendered as ‘Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets’. The music and words were written for the musical play Damn Yankees.
The song is sung by Lola, the Devil’s assistant. The saying was inspired by Lola Montez, an Irish-born Spanish dancer and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
In 1846, she arrived in Munich, where she was discovered by and became the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria.
She soon began to use her influence on the King and this, coupled with her arrogant manner and outbursts of temper, made her unpopular.
Despite the opposition, Ludwig made her Countess of Landsfeld on his next birthday, 25th August 1847.
Along with her title, he granted her a large annuity. For more than a year, she exercised great political power.
In March 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, Ludwig abdicated, and Montez fled Bavaria, and her career as a power behind the throne at an end.
It seems likely that Ludwig’s relationship with Montez contributed greatly to the fall from grace of the previously popular king.
In 1851 she set off to make a new start in the United States, where she was surprisingly successful at first in rehabilitating her image.
From 1851 to 1853, she performed as a dancer and actress in the eastern United States.
In May 1853, she arrived in San Francisco. and her performances there created a sensation.
In June 1855, Montez departed for a tour of Australia to resume her career by entertaining miners at the gold diggings during the gold-rush of the 1850’s.
In September 1855 she performed her erotic Spider Dance at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne, raising her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all.
She departed for San Francisco on 22 May 1856. On the return voyage her manager was lost after going overboard. Lola failed in attempts at a theatrical comeback in various American cities.
By then she was showing the tertiary effects of syphilis and her body began to waste away. She died at the age of 39 on 17th January 1861.
Nicknamed Sassy and The Divine One, Sarah Vaughan won four Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Parallels have been drawn between Vaughan’s voice and that of opera singers.
Sarah Vaughan was married three times: to George Treadwell (1946–1958), to Clyde Atkins (1958–1961), and to Waymon Reed (1978–1981).
Unable to bear children, Vaughan adopted a baby girl (Debra Lois) in 1961.
In 1989, Vaughan’s health began to decline, although she rarely revealed any hints of this in her performances.
During a run at New York’s Blue Note Jazz Club in 1989, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and was too ill to finish the last day.
She returned to her home to begin chemotherapy and spent her final months alternating stays in the hospital and at home.
She grew weary of the struggle and demanded to be taken home, where she died, age 66, on the evening of April 3, 1990, while watching a television movie featuring her daughter.