For me its Sarah Vaughn. She's unusual and mesmerizing all at the same time. Many excellent tenor saxophone players wish they could play with the emotional impact that "Sassy" did.
Patricia Barber??? Really? Here albums are DRENCHED in artificial reverb. I have heard that with the 180 gram version, they finally got the thing to sound decent.
I haven't read all the nominations on this thread, so she may have already been mentioned, but Emmylou Harris has a distinctive and unusual voice. A pretty fair amount of vibrato, which I usually distain, but for some reason doesn't bother me in her case. Her voice has a lot of texture, being very "throaty", and she really inhabits the lyrics, giving them depth and meaning.
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