Scat singing

[laughs]

[laughs] Scat, that too.

Yeah, maybe that's Axl's new direction.

Yeah, that's-

Scatman.

[laughs] Scatman Slash.

Uh, anyway.

Well, Slash, uh, and he's doing stuff with Miles Kennedy right now.

and then bebop emerged, pushing harmonic complexity to new heights.

Scat singers like Ella Fitzgerald navigated those dense changes by translating chord symbols into rhythmic syllables on the fly.

Ella's Misty Blue sessions are a textbook example.

She could move through altered dominants and minor extensions without ever spelling out the notes.

Fast forward to the digital era, streaming platforms now surface thousands of scat performances, allowing new listeners to sample snippets and learn by ear, an echo of how early jazzists learned from each other's recordings.

The lesson here is that a single stylistic shift can ripple through every layer of an ecosystem, from performance practice to technology to audience culture.

Scat singing didn't just add a new vocal trick.

It rewrote the language of jazz, turning the human voice into an instrument capable of navigating complex harmonic landscapes while maintaining that unmistakable groove we first heard on Dipper Mouth Blues.

[upbeat music] I'm flush.

Scatting, leaning eight job programs in the car cush.

Kem, Kem's a egg and pop new fuss.

When? I jump in a taxi, not on a bus.

The myth sticks because it makes for a great story, but the record shows the reality.

But whether or not Scat was born there, the Hot Five did change jazz forever.

It shifted the focus from collective ensemble to individual virtuosity, creating a template that bebop and later styles would follow.

That shift also opened doors for African American musicians to claim

And this is from the whole album where they do all Count Basie songs in this album, but made for voice.

It's very... interesting and odd, but it's such a groovy way of, I just hadn't realized, I guess, you know, because I think of beautiful jazz singers like, you know, Billie Holiday, and then like you were talking about Scat, there's Cab Calloway, the great George with his guitar, but this kind of particular jazz, well, these are like quartets and trios, some of these groups, is this kind of own thing, and I don't think there's a name for it because I keep seeing it get named to different things.

But VocalEase, I guess, is because they took an existing song and added vocals to it, but it's not quite scat because it's not complete nonsense vocals.

Yeah, interesting how these two sort of veins of jazz singing, like solo jazz singers versus groups sort of emerged.