Word: scat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sisters. "We're not rhythm and blues or jazz. We're a new category−variety," declared Ruth, the oldest of the four daughters of an Oakland preacher. The quartet mixed jive talk with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross-like jazz and performed some marvelously energetic and ornate scat that called down visions of Cab Galloway...
...they talk," She claims to be confused over how the people can learn from The People. Irreverently explaining that she could not otherwise keep them straight, she abbreviates recurring slogans. Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-Tung Thought is reduced to ML&M. Struggle, Criticism and Transformation becomes SCAT. Expedient, but something was obviously lost in translation...
...continued by "Wild Night." Van Morrison, no matter what'll happen the rest of the way through, opens with a rocker. This is the sureshot; if I don't hear this on WRKO's top ten instantly, I'm going to want to know way. It has everything, scat sung opening, with handclapping, a gorgeous eight bar progression, mostly nonsense lyrics, two horns overdubbed to make four, more energy than 2:56 deserves, and the musical resurrection of the words, "let it all hang...
...CONCERT he retains some of the old ranting. "He Ain't Give You None," from Blowing' Your Mind, was his most powerful effort of the evening: Scat singing over his choir, improvising, creating tension, and finally letting the band blow. It was the only time all night his band--tight, disciplined and nameless--could display its talent. He also sang "Cypress Avenue," and revealed his own essential contradiction. There is a showman within Van Morrison, and the tension between that showman and an apparent detachment creates his stage presence. His band gave him a soul-style introduction, thirty seconds...
Morrison began to use his voice non-verbally, as an instrument. In most songs he would bring the band down to a groove and then simply scat sing over that groove. "Caravan" had a beautifully timed and syncopated, "doo-doot" scat chorus from the choir, and "Tupelo Honey" had a long scat singing section. The scat singing is an undercurrent, a constant reminder of the building tensions in Morrison's music...