Vocalese,1 of 4: History, Annie Ross—and Marion Harris in 1934! (+Bonus)

(A significant 1953 article by Leonard Feather, the first one ever about vocalese, is below for Paying Subscribers.)

As with all my posts, this is not a basic introduction, and not a comprehensive overview, but rather an opportunity to explore a few little-known, and in some cases totally unknown, aspects of this subject:

Leonard Feather, jazz critic, historian, pianist and composer, coined the word “vocalese.” Up to that point it had never been used by any of the performers involved. In Downbeat, January 28, 1953, he wrote enthusiastically about Annie Ross’s October 1952 recording, “Twisted,” for which she put words to Wardell Grey’s 1949 tenor saxophone recording of the same name:

(The full article, where he says more about “Twisted” and how it relates to the past and future of jazz vocals, is below for Paying Subscribers.)

And his word became accepted. But did you ever look up these words? For “vocalese,” you will of course find that it refers to the jazz practice of setting words to recorded improvised solos. But, now change just one letter, and look up the noun that he mentions, “vocalise” (not the verb, usually spelled “vocalize”), which is pronounced exactly the same way, that is, “vocaleez.” You will find details such as this in the standard Oxford English Dictionary:

Used as early as 1851: A singing exercise using individual vowel sounds or syllables sung in succession, typically in order to develop flexibility and control of pitch and tone. (I add—this meaning is the one that Feather mentions. It refers to vocal exercises where you sing, for example, arpeggios, using “ee,” then again using “eye,” “oh,” and “you.”)

Used from 1857: A passage or piece of vocal music consisting of a succession of vowel sounds or syllables; a wordless sung melody. (I add—that’s why Rachmaninoff’s beautiful wordless piece is called “Vocalise.”)

Please Notice—In both cases, “vocalise” refers to music Without words! Did Feather have a good idea to change one letter and use it to refer to a type of music that’s all about words?? In my opinion, No. It’s too confusing. But we’re stuck with “vocalese,” for sure. So from here on, I’ll take off the quotation marks.

Not only is the name not ideal, but Feather applied it very inconsistently. Clearly, vocalese pieces are not improvised, because they are very involved verbal constructions that can take weeks to create, and must be memorized. But he presented a very confusing argument in Jazz Quarterly 1959. (Edited by Ralph Gleason, this was one of several short-lived and unrelated magazines of that name over the years.) It’s almost incomprehensible, but he appears to be saying that since they are setting words to improvisations, vocalese itself counts as improvisation? See if this makes sense to you:

Huh? Mainly what I get from this is that he loves vocalese and doesn’t want to accept or admit that it’s not improvised. I know that vocalese is not improvised, and I’m OK with that. I enjoy all kinds of tributes to recorded solos that are memorized and rehearsed (non-vocal ones include Supersax, Prez Conference, etc.)

Usually, the history of vocalese singing is dated to the late 1940s and early 1950s, and credited to Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure. BUT—isn’t this recording below an example of vocalese—from 1934?? (NOTE: Bee Palmer recorded a vocalese version earlier, in 1929, but it was not issued until 1997. However, there is reason to believe that the two singers knew each other and that Harris may have known Palmer’s lyricist. That is discussed in a supplementary post, 1A.) Below is a recording of Marion Harris, who was well-known from about 1916 through the early 1930s, and was called the first white woman to sing the blues. She recorded three of W. C. Handy’s blues songs, among others. Here she performs her own lyrics to Bix Beiderbecke’s famous 1927 cornet solo on “Singin’ the Blues”—which, actually, is not a blues, but is in a tradition of songs that are “about” the blues. (“The Birth of the Blues” is another one.) You can listen to Marion and Bix below. I adjusted the tempo and pitch of the Bix to make it match better with her vocal. That way, you can now go back and forth between them—the first track below is Bix and the second is Marion:

The words must be hers, because the original song is credited to Robinson and Conrad, but her version is credited to “Harris” on the 78rpm label. And her lyrics are pretty wild. She even performs Bix’s fast break, Jon Hendricks-style. Here’s Bix’s break, then Harris:

Her words are: “I’d like to know what made you go—If you’ve got someone calling you ‘Hon’” (that is, if you’ve got another woman), “I’m gonna go and get myself a great big Gatling gun.” What’s a Gatling gun? It was an early type of machine gun! (It was already obsolete by that time, but the name was still familiar to people.) The words continue about how she’s going to shoot him dead and send bullets through his hair, even if they send seventy detectives after her! Wild! Harris was a regular Annie Ross, but twenty years earlier! (And subscriber Peter Gerler notes that at 0:14 in the recording above, under the Bix audio, it sounds like she sings “You chocolate baby doll.” Is she singing to a Black man?)

On the original instrumental, saxophonist Frank Trumbauer solos first. His solo was widely imitated by both white and Black musicians, according to Lester Young, Eddie Barefield and others—and as evidenced by the fact that Fletcher Henderson’s entire sax section, including Coleman Hawkins, played the solo on recordings in 1931. (And cornetist Rex Stewart then plays his version of Bix’s solo.) Harris does perform Trumbauer’s solo, but she reverses the order and does it after the Bix solo that you just heard. If you listen to her entire recording below, you’ll realize that she did this to better fit the musical and verbal story she was telling. (If you don’t know the Trumbauer solo, which she sings at 1:45 below, you can find his “Singin’ the Blues” with Bix easily online, such as here.) You’ll notice that she completely changes the ending:

(That strange moment at 2:06 where she sings “do” twice is apparently not an error in digitizing. The rhythm section keeps playing right through it.)

I’ve heard many of Harris’s roughly 190 recordings, and I’ve never heard another one where she performed vocalese. (If you know of one, or any other 1930s vocalese recording, please let me know.) This was her last recording session (although she did write a song that was recorded by others the next year). So maybe she was just getting into vocalese when she stopped recording, and that’s unlucky for us. But this one example is enough to show that she was quite a talent.

In a supplementary short essay, we will learn about Bee Palmer’s version of “Singin’ the Blues,” which was recorded before Harris’s but not released until 1997. Then, in Part 2, we will look at the first recordings of modern vocalese, with new information. And in the third and fourth ones we will enjoy the Delta Rhythm Boys, with newly discovered film clips!

All the best,
Lewis

(Paying Subscribers, the full Leonard Feather article, where he raves about Annie Ross and coins the word “vocalese,” is below, with my thanks to you.)