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Jazz, especially the bop-derived styles to which that term now largely refers, is generally considered an instrumental idiom; far less often the term 'jazz musician" conjures up an image of a singer. In this context, scat singing, the usual medium for jazz vocal improvisation, is usually understood as singers imitating instrumentalists (e.g., Robinson 1994:1093). There is ample evidence for this view. As Milton Stewart has shown, the vocables used by such notable exponents of scat as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan often mimic the tonguing, phrasing, and articulation of instrumentalists (1987:65, 68, 74). Furthermore, by dissociating the vocal line from verbal meaning, scat singers venture into the realm of so-called "absolute" music where musical sounds are apparently free of the extra-musical associations that words create, a realm typically identified with instrumental music. Jazz singers who explore this realm do so by adopting the role of the horn player in the ensemble.1
While acknowledging this view, Paul Berliner reminds us that the exchange of ideas between jazz players and singers has flowed abundantly in both directions (1994:125). Scattered throughout his monumental study Thinking in Jazz are references to instrumentalists drawing upon vocal expression and technique in both forming and communicating their musical ideas. Generalizing about the ways master musicians guide the formation of their students' musical imaginations, for example, Berliner states that, "Many experts advise learners to practice singing tunes initially with nonverbal or scat syllables-to master the melodies aurally without relying on physical expression such as fingering patterns or the visualization of an instrument's layout" (ibid.:66). Many other authors have also recognized the importance of vocal expression in instrumental jazz.2
Perhaps because of the extensive crossover of ideas between instrumentalists and vocalists-a crossover that has been considered by some to be a defining feature of jazz-scat singing has received little consideration as an expressive medium in its own right.3 Indeed, there has been precious little musical analysis of jazz singing in general, let alone scat. In order to address this lacuna, my study illustrates an analytic approach to scat that grows from the distinctive features of jazz vocal performance practice. The analysis will focus largely on timbre, an important element that generally receives inadequate attention in...