Scat singing
[2][3] In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice solely as an instrument rather than a speaking medium.
[4] Will Friedwald has compared Ella Fitzgerald to Chuck Jones directing his Roadrunner cartoon—each uses predetermined formulas in innovative ways.
Leo Watson, who performed before the canon of American popular music, frequently drew on nursery rhymes in his scatting.
In her 1960 recording of "How High the Moon" live in Berlin, she quotes over a dozen songs, including "The Peanut Vendor," "Heat Wave," "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
"[14] Improvisational singing of nonsense syllables occurs in many cultures, such as diddling or lilting in Ireland, German yodeling, Sámi joik, and speaking in tongues in various religious traditions.
Although Louis Armstrong's 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" is often cited as the first modern song to employ scatting,[15][16] there are many earlier examples.
[21][22] One of the early female singers to use scat was Aileen Stanley, who included it at the end of a duet with Billy Murray in their hit 1924 recording of "It Had To Be You" (Victor 19373).
Jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton credited Joe Sims of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as the creator of scat around the turn of the 20th century.
[15] In a possibly apocryphal story,[26] Armstrong claimed that, when he was recording "Heebie Jeebies" with his band The Hot Five, his sheet music fell off the stand and onto the ground.
"[19] The song would serve as a model for Cab Calloway, whose 1930s scat solos inspired George Gershwin's use of the medium in his 1935 opera Porgy and Bess.
[28] On October 26, 1927, Duke Ellington's Orchestra recorded "Creole Love Call" featuring Adelaide Hall singing wordlessly.
[29] A year later, in October 1928, Ellington repeated the experiment in one of his versions of "The Mooche," with Getrude "Baby" Cox singing scat after a muted similar trombone solo by Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton.
[33] Fitzgerald herself would become a talented scat singer and later claimed to be the "best vocal improviser jazz has ever had," and critics since then have been in almost universal agreement with her.
[1] During this 1930s era, other famous scat singers included Scatman Crothers[34]—who would go on to movie and television fame[34]—and British dance band trumpeter and vocalist Nat Gonella[35] whose scat-singing recordings were banned[c] in Nazi Germany.
[27] Annie Ross, a bop singer, expressed a common sentiment among vocalists at the time: "The [scat] music was so exciting, everyone wanted to do it.
"[36] And many did: Eddie Jefferson, Betty Carter, Anita O'Day, Joe Carroll, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Jon Hendricks, Babs Gonzales, Mel Torme and Dizzy Gillespie were all singers in the idiom.
[27] During the mid-1990s, jazz artist John Paul Larkin (better known as Scatman John) renewed interest in the genre briefly when he began fusing jazz singing with pop music and electronica, scoring a world-wide hit with the song "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)" in 1994.
Vocal improviser Bobby McFerrin's performances have shown that "wordless singing has traveled far from the concepts demonstrated by Louis Armstrong, Gladys Bentley, Cab Calloway, Anita O'Day, and Leo Watson.
A technique most commonly used by bass singers in a cappella groups is to simulate an instrumental rhythm section, often alongside a vocal percussionist or beatboxer.
Some notable vocal bass artists are Tim Foust, Adam Chance, Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, Reggie Watts, Alvin Chea, Joe Santoni, Avi Kaplan, Matt Sallee, Chris Morey, Geoff Castellucci.
[42] In West African music, it is typical to convert drum rhythms into vocal melodies; common rhythmic patterns are assigned specific syllabic translations.
[27] Others have proposed that scat singing arose from jazz musicians' practice of formulating riffs vocally before performing them instrumentally.
Many jazz singers, including Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Dinah Washington, have avoided scat entirely.
