Louis Armstrong's “Skid Dat De Dat”: Timbral Organization in an Early Scat Solo

Abstract

Louis Armstrong sang and played music with an expressive force that has defied time's corrosive affects and musicologists' analytic methods. While his work as an instrumentalist has received much attention in the scholarly literature, his work as a vocalist has not. In order to gain a complete grasp of Armstrong's contribution as an artist, we need to consider his singing. Moreover, his work as a scat vocalist challenges us to enrich our understanding of jazz improvisation by exposing musical data that standard musical notation omits. Using theoretical tools from applied linguistics to represent and analyze scat syllables, this research gives us a rich understanding of the technical resources at Armstrong's disposal. After an overview of relevant theoretical ideas from this field, the proposed method sheds light on Armstrong's vocal technique by guiding listeners through an analysis of Armstrong's singing on “Skid Dat De Dat.” Phonetic transcriptions and audio waveforms provide useful alternatives to standard musical notation, revealing the control Armstrong exerted over vocal timbre and the specific ways in which Armstrong's phrasing and articulation contribute to his swing. The analysis clarifies relationships between timbre and other musical elements, such as rhythm, dynamics, and pitch. The methods offered here gives jazz scholars new tools for analyzing timbre, phrasing, articulation, and accentuation. By bringing into perspective the multidimensional sound image that impelled musicians to create jazz, these methods can improve our understanding of the specific ways in which African American musicians and their imitators have used music as an expressive language, as a repertoire, as a tradition, and as a story that they tell about themselves and their people.