Ruth Leon recommends… What Is Jazz? Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme

What Is Jazz? Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme

Thanks to my friend Adele who found this priceless clip online, here is 3 minutes and 3 seconds of pure jazz gold.

I don’t need to explain who these two peerless artists, now sadly no longer with us, are but perhaps, for those less familiar with jazz, a word about the technique they’re using. It is called Scat or Scatting. Originating in vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice solely as an instrument rather than a speaking medium.

All the great jazz singers can scat but Ella Fitzgerald was the supreme practitioner and, as you can see from this clip, Mel Torme was her equal. Scatting requires complete mastery of the underlying melody and rhythm in order to be able to improvise successfully over the top.

Nobody does it like Ella. Unless, of course, it’s Mel.

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