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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Scat Singing: Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, & Ella Fitzgerald

Edited by Azizi Powell

Heebie Jeebies / Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five



Uploaded by MINICQQPER on May 11, 2010

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This post features information and video examples of scat singing as performed by.

My thanks to these iconic performers for this rich legacy. My thanks also to these videos' uploaders for making these film clips accessible.
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INFORMATION ABOUT SCATTING
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing
"In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice...

Jelly Roll Morton credited Joe Sims of Vicksburg, Mississippi as the creator of scat around the turn of the 20th century...

It was Armstrong's 1926 performance, however, that was the turning point for the medium.[15] According to Armstrong, when he was recording the song "Heebie Jeebies", soon to be a national bestseller, with his band The Hot Five, his music fell to the ground. Not knowing the lyrics to the song, he invented a gibberish melody to fill time, expecting the cut to be thrown out in the end, but that take of the song was the one released.[11] The story is widely believed to be apocryphal,[16] but the influence of the recording was nonetheless enormous.

Jelly Roll Morton credited Joe Sims of Vicksburg, Mississippi as the creator of scat around the turn of the 20th century. Louis Armstrong served as a model for Cab Calloway, whose 1930s scat solos inspired Gershwin's use of the medium in his Porgy and Bess; it was from the 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" arose the techniques that would form the foundation of modern scat."

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Video #1: Heebie Jeebies / Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five

This video is posted at the top of this page. Here is information about the band members as posted by that video's uploader:
Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five

Louis Armstrong (c,vo)
Kid Ory (tb)
Johnny Dodds (cl)
Lil Armstrong (p)
Johnny St. Cyr (bj)

February 26, 1926, Chicago, Illinois

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1932 version: Cab Calloway - The Scat Song (Cab Calloway, vocal)



MusicProf78, Published on Dec 22, 2016

Original 78rpm courtesy of the Rick Colom Collection. The songs on both this and the also-posted flip side “There’s A Cabin In The Cotton” (listen here: https://youtu.be/4Gw10vy9Qyg) would be re-recorded by Calloway in November 1933 and released on the Victor label.

Transferred from 78rpm: Brunswick 6272 - The Skat Song (Parish-Perkins) by Cab Calloway & his Orchestra, vocal by Cab Calloway, recorded in Chicago February 29,, 1932
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Here's information from a summary for another sound file of this song that was embedded in this post but is no longer available:
"Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (Dec.25,1907 - Nov.18,1994) was a famous American jazz singer and bandleader.
Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s.

Calloway's Orchestra featured performers that included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86."

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Video #3: Cab Calloway - Minnie the Moocher [1958]



Uploaded by moontreal on Mar 18, 2008

Minnie the Moocher

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Video #4: Ella Fitzgerald : One note Samba (scat singing) 1969



Uploaded by diegodobini2 on Jan 26, 2007

June 22, 1969 jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald with accompaniment by Ed Thigpen on drums, Frank de la Rosa on bass, and Tommy Flanagan on piano.

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Video #5: Jazz - Conversation in Scat - Ella Fitzgerald (1974)



Uploaded by internet100 on May 10, 2010

7 minutes of scat singin'

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