Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) was an American jazz singer. She was sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She is considered by many to be one of the greatest scat singers in jazz history. Scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless or nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice as an instrument. Notice the fast tempo, typical of jazz styles such as such as swing and bebop.
Scat emerged in jazz in the early 1900s when singers in New Orleans began to imitate the first jazz instrumentalists. Legend has it that Louis Armstrong, the great trumpeter, vocalist and pioneer of improvisation in jazz, became the first to record scat in the 1926 track “Heebie Jeebies”, when he forgot the words during a recording session. Louis Armstrong has already featured on the music blog back in April: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/hayesmusic.blog/977
Learn more about Ella Fitzgerald here:
