THE IMPROVISED BIRTH OF SCAT
So you haven’t heard about the birth of Scat ?
Legend has it that in 1926, during the recording of Heebie Jeebies, Louis Armstrong forgot the lyrics as he began a sung chorus. Far from panicking, the singer and trumpeter improvised on the spot, replacing the words with onomatopoeia.
This gave birth to "scat", a style of vocal improvisation in which the singer uses non-lexical vocal sounds to create a melody.
An art that legends such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan would later take to new heights of virtuosity.
Scat became a trademark of vocal jazz, closely linked to the emergence of jazz. More than simply forgetting the words, scat is about improvisation, a characteristic common to all instruments in jazz.
