Entry · catalog no. 1310
scat
/ /skæt/ /SKAT
noun, verb · Black American performance — ragtime and vaudeville stages, New Orleans, then Chicago and Harlem · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
Wordless vocal improvisation, the syllables chosen for sound and attack rather than meaning.
“She dropped the lyric halfway through the second chorus and scatted the rest of it.”
2.
To sing that way.
“He could scat a solo note for note off the record and never open a songbook.”
Origin & Attribution
Black vernacular performance practice with roots in ragtime, vaudeville, and New Orleans jazz in the 1900s and 1910s. The practice clearly predates the word. Jelly Roll Morton, recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1938, put it around 1906 with a Vicksburg comedian named Joe Sims and explicitly denied that Louis Armstrong invented it. Armstrong's 1926 "Heebie Jeebies" is the record that made scat singing famous, and the word appears to have attached to the practice after it — Armstrong's own claim was the narrow one, that his record was the first time the name was applied, not that he had invented the thing. The often-repeated dismissal of the dropped-lyric-sheet story is an overcorrection worth resisting: banjoist Johnny St. Cyr described the paper slipping, and Armstrong confirmed it himself in a 1956 interview. What is false is the conclusion drawn from it. Don Redman had already scatted on record with Fletcher Henderson in April 1924, before Armstrong joined the band.
1911
Gene Greene records "King of the Bungaloos" for Columbia on February 17 — frequently cited as the earliest scat on record
1924
Don Redman scats on Fletcher Henderson's "My Papa Doesn't Two-Time No Time," recorded April 16
1926
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five record "Heebie Jeebies" on February 26; released on OKeh 8300, it makes the practice famous and the word sticks to it
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Black American performance — ragtime and vaudeville stages, New Orleans, then Chicago and Harlem · 1920s
Spoken by
Jazz singers and the instrumentalists they were imitating; later anyone who learned it off a record
$SCATThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring100 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
57/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1926
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
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Citations & Sources
■
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five — "Heebie Jeebies" — OKeh 8300 · rec. 26 Feb 1926
Composition by Boyd Atkins; released May 1926 backed with "Muskrat Ramble"
■
Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra — "My Papa Doesn't Two-Time No Time" — rec. 16 Apr 1924
Scat vocal by Don Redman, made before Armstrong joined the band
■
Gene Greene — "King of the Bungaloos" — Columbia A994 · rec. 17 Feb 1911
Verified in the Discography of American Historical Recordings and the Library of Congress National Jukebox
■
+ Cite a sourceJelly Roll Morton — Library of Congress recordings, interviewed by Alan Lomax · 1938
Dates the practice to about 1906 and denies Armstrong invented it
See also