Vocalese: What the scat is that?

Twisted, Bijou, and Everybody’s Boppin’ – all by Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross.
all on Everybody’s Boppin’ on Columbia (1959).

You can file this under edutainment, all apologies to KRS-1. As to whether it is your edutainment or just mine read on to find out. Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks were both jazz lyricists and vocalists with a heavy interest in the new developments in terms of complex rhythms and free chord changes for solos brought about by the bop revolution in the 40s and 50s. They met up in the mid-50s and quickly formed a trio with female vocalist Annie Ross. They worked together for roughly 5 years primarily in the idiom of Vocalese, which is singing style that uses vocals to mimic instrumental sections from music. Vocalese differs from its similarly inclined cousin by instead of using nonsensical sounds to mimic various instrumental section actually having lyrics sung.

King Pleasure and others were instrumental (no pun intended) to the early development of vocalese, but Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross really became the face(s) of that style as the most popular vocal jazz group from 1958-1962 (when Ross left the group).

“Twisted” is a showcase song for Annie Ross and like many of their songs comes across now as pretty corny. It sounds more like a Broadway tune than something I would think of as jazz. It was arguably the group’s biggest hit and shows really advanced vocal dexterity and purity of tone that you won’t be hearing on any reality television singing show anytime soon. Meanwhile, “Bijou” is a beautiful track and displays the group’s ability to work together very well. Additionally, it has a distinct bop feel that has allowed it to age much better than the other two tracks here. Finally “Everybody’s Boppin’” is neat because of its lightning pace and combination of both vocalese and scatting side by side.

I had never heard of vocalese until recently (hence the edutainment), and my initial reaction was that it was horribly dated and corny. Other that “Bijou,” I felt it sounded like a more parody of jazz group vocals. While this style certainly isn’t my favorite (I’m not a huge fan of jazz vocals or even singing in general), it has grown on me and I’ve become very appreciative of the talent required for both the singing and lyrical arrangement skills. If you happen to like these tracks, I definitely recommend getting LH&R’s Sing A Song of Basie or something by King Pleasure.