February 19, 2021- Today's Bebop Era Topic: Bebop Spoken Here: The Bebop Singers
During the Bebop Era there were basically three types of vocals that emerged. One was simply vocalists who worked with bop musicians. This included artists such as
Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Kenny Pancho Hagood and Earl Coleman. For example this is Sarah Vaughan singing Mean to Me with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in 1945.
Next were the vocalists who adapted the bebop style to scat singing. The most prominent and the pioneer of this style was Babs Gonzales. Joe Carroll with Dizzy Gillespie was another.
The third was vocalese which is different from scat singing in that the vocalist creates lyrics to famous jazz solos. King Pleasure and Eddie Jefferson were the pioneers of this style along with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross among others. Vocalese didn’t really start to appear on records until the early fifties but the style was rooted in the bop era.