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Scat syllables and markedness theory* Patricia A. Shaw University of British Columbia here could be no more appropriate dedication to Jack: T Th ou Swell (scat solo) Th ou swell 1927. Words by Lorenz Hart, Music by Richard Rodgers. Scat solo by Betty Carter, transcribed by William R. Bauer (2002a: 251). A highly creative domain between the prosodies of human language and the riff s of inﬆ rumental jazz is the dynamic vocal jazz idiom of scat. Th e present analysis proceeds from the observation that, despite the diﬆ inct ly individualiﬆ ic approaches to scatting by renowned jazz maﬆ ers such as Louis Armﬆ rong, Betty Carter, and Chet Baker, the inventory of the semantically empty syllables used in scat is extremely limited in comparison to the rich range of combinatorial possibilities that defi ne well-formed syllables in English. Th is paper explores the degree to which the form of scat syllables in the performance repertoire of various artiﬆ s conforms to poﬆ ulated universal markedness conﬆ raints on natural language syllables. Signifi cantly, markedness theory plausibly accounts for a considerable range of the data. Nonetheless, certain syﬆ ematic deviations occur. It is proposed that the relative markedness of such properties may be genre-dependent, funct ioning in scat to enhance musical form or modality. 1. Introduction Like the majority of human languages in the world, which evolved and persist as strictly oral traditions, scat emerged in the realm of musical genres as a vibrant, expressive, and exclusively oral idiom. However, unlike human languages, scat does not build on a consistent, conventionalized relationship between sound and meaning. Its essence is creative, improvisational vocal tract sound. Its syllables and sequences are evocative and emotive, but not denotative. There is no standardized or systematic interpretability to the musically parsed cadences of scat syllables. For example, the title of Louis Armstrong’s 1926 hit Heebie Jeebies has a consistent interpretation, verifiable across different speakers, as * I am deeply indebted to Mike Fitzgerald, Kate Hammett-Vaughn, Ted Moore, Tyler Peterson, Suzanne Pittson, Fred Stride, and particularly Bill Bauer and Alan Matheson for their generous guidance. Special thanks to Walter Pedersen for his enthusiastic assistance with transcription and in tracking recordings. Toronto Working Papers in Linguiﬆ ics 27: 145–191 Copyright © 2008 Patricia Shaw Patricia A. Shaw refering to a kind of nervous energy or a scattered uneasy feeling, the ‘jitters’. However, the sequence of syllables in the scat line in (1) would elicit no coherent consensual meaning.¹ (1) Bars 5–7 of the scat solo by Louis Armstrong in Heebie Jeebies (1926)² WRB: | duw Œ daw diy duw də | ‰ diy də də dow diy | dow di dow duw ‰ duw– | | duw Œ daw diy duw də | ‰ diy də də dow diy | dow dɩ dow duw ‰ duw– | In a formal linguistic sense, then, scat syllables are semantically ‘empty’. Nonetheless, of considerable linguistic interest is their form. The present analysis proceeds from the observation that, despite the distinctly individualistic approaches to scatting by great vocal jazz masters, the repertoire of the semantically empty syllables used in scat is extremely limited in comparison to the rich range of combinatorial possibilities that define well-formed syllables in English. For example, two properties of the excerpt in (1) are immediately noteworthy, and, as it turns out, are robustly characteristic of scat vocables produced by a broad diversity of performers. First, consider the onset and coda³ structure of the scat syllables in (1): of the 15 syllables, all have a single consonant as onset—there are no clusters, no onsetless syllables, and none has even a single consonant as coda. In other words, all are ‘open’ CV or CVG syllables, despite the fact that English words are built on an inventory of combinatorial possibilities that readily sanctions codas, and allows quite extensive complexity within both onset and coda clusters, e.g. as [str...] and [...ŋkθs] in ‘strengths’ [strɛŋkθs]. Secondly, not only do all the scat syllables in (1) have a non-complex onset, but in fact they all have the same consonant [d] as the syllable onset. As a means of comparison, now consider in (2) the structure of the syllables in another scat solo by Louis Armstrong from Hotter Than That, recorded 3 years later (cited from Reeves 2001 by Bauer 2002b: 308). Just as in (1), all the syllables in (2) are canonical open syllables: all have a single segment onset, none has a complex onset, and none has a coda. However, in contrast to (1), there are no [d]s. Rather, here all 16 syllables have [b] as their onset. (2) Bars 49–54 of the scat solo by Louis Armstrong in Hotter Than That (1929) WRB: | | | | | | | boh ‰ bə Œ boh ‰ ba Œ bə ‰ biy Œ bə ‰ biy Œ bow ‰ bə Œ bow ‰ bə Œ ba ‰ biy Œ ba ‰ biy Œ | | | | | | | bɔ ‰ bə Œ bɔ ‰ ba Œ bə ‰ biy Œ bə ‰ biy Œ bow ‰ bə Œ bow ‰ bə Œ ba ‰ biy Œ ba ‰ biy Œ ¹ An independent measure of what has—or has not—conventionalized semantic interpretability is reflected by which sequences of sounds are accorded entry as ‘words’ in standard English dictionaries. Consistent with the particular example chosen here, ‘heebie-jeebies’ is listed as a word in the American Heritage dictionary: “slang. A feeling of uneasiness or nervousness; the jitters.”. However, none of the various potential spellings of the scat syllables (de, dee, deh, di, dih, du, duh, doo, etc. ) are. ² The transcription line labelled WRB is by Bauer 2002b: 308; the transliteration beneath it follows the principles of phonemic interpretation in Appendix 1. ³ The use of the terms onset and coda here does not entail the attribution of category or constituency status within a formal theory of prosodic structure. Rather, these are simply cover terms to reference (i) as onset, the string (possibly null) of segments between the left edge of a syllable and the Nucleus, and (ii) as coda, the string (possibly null) of segments between the Nucleus and the right edge of a syllable. The Nucleus is assumed to be an independent category node, which in English dominates a short vowel (V), long vowel (Vː), or diphthong (VG). C abbreviates ‘consonant’, V ‘vowel’, G ‘glide’, σ ‘syllable’. 146 Scat syllables and markedness theory In sum, two generalizations are strikingly evident from the data in (1) and (2). First, of the 24 consonants available in the English phonemic inventory, the only two used in these excerpts are [b] and [d]. Secondly, the syllable structure is consistently open, i.e. not closed by a coda consonant. To an extreme then, Louis Armstrong’s repertoire in these citations exemplifies the fundamental premise of this research: scat draws on a very limited subset of the sounds and of the syllabic groupings that are regularly used in English. However, how representative are these generalizations? Is the favouring of [b] and [d] part of Satchmo’s own particular idiosyncratic style, or is this genuinely something that is broadly characteristic of scat? What—you are doubtless wanting to interject—about the [š] in shoo be doo? And to what extent do other scat singers use a more diversified and complex range of syllable shapes? What about codas? After all, who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?⁴ A diverse sampling of vocal scat is investigated here, ranging from classic jazz icons like Louis Armstrong, Betty Carter, and Chet Baker to pop music song-writers/recording artists like Johnny Cymbal and Barry Mann, who in the early 60s wittily transported the playful and unmistakably sexy edginess of scat directly into their rock’n’roll lyrics. Across these artists, generations, and genres, the basic introductory observations about scat are consistently affirmed: the inventory of sounds used and their syllabic organization constitute a significantly small subset of the full diversity of available English options. The principal goal is to identify just what generalizations about phonological form hold within this body of scat data, and to explore various hypotheses that might plausibly explain why the particular patterns that are attested emerge in scat. From the perspective of linguistic theory, the observations are evaluated in the context of postulated universal constraints on articulatory phonetics and phonological markedness. Interestingly, a considerable range of the data is plausibly accounted for by markedness theory. Equally interesting is the finding that certain systematically attested scat properties run directly counter to markedness expectations. The highly marked, yet robustly attested status of these characteristics suggests that over-riding the body of linguistic constraints on the scat phonological system are competing constraints on scat as a musical performance genre, constraints that function to enhance the melodic pitch contour, the musical phrasing, the auditory interpretation, or the distinctive trademarking of individual artistic style. What results from this analysis is a unique perspective into the structural and performative interface of two complex systems of human vocal expression—music and language—each subject to distinct sets of constraints and conventions, sometimes convergent and sometimes conflicting, but ultimately combining in the creative exuberance of scat. 1.1. Purview The analyses in §2 below are sequenced with respect to the recording date chronology. Beginning with the seminal 1926 Heebie Jeebies recording, the full context of the Louis Armstrong scat solo from which the three-bar excerpt in (1) was drawn is explored ⁴ Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin did, in their 1961 hit single, Who Put the Bomp? 147 Patricia A. Shaw in §2.1. This is then compared to the phonological properties of a 1929 rendition of Hotter Than That. In §2.2, the focus shifts to Chet Baker (1955; 1989), an icon of consonantal minimalism.

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