Lady Be Good - Ella Fitzgerald

from Lady Be Good (Serpent 549-550)

The anthology includes the transcribed scat “syllables” sung by Ella Fitzgerald in the 1947 recording of “Lady Be Good” with the Bob Haggart Orchestra. The song includes conventional, poetic lyrics lyric genius sung conventionally by many vocalists.

Following the conventions of jazz musicians taking improvised solos, Ella Fitzgerald developed (pioneered?) the practice of jazz vocalists also improvising melodic and rhythmic solos, rather than singing the lyrics only and allowing instrumentalists to take improvised solos. Voice always involves syllable sounds. Hum a tune … “la la la la la”. Fitzgerald is notable for the skill, variety and individuality she brings to all dimensions of these solos.

In the _Serpent and the Fire_, the patterns of scat syllables are foregrounded – showing their variety, permutations and rhythms.

The transcription anthologized reflects a particular performance:

Youtube of 1947 recording - solo begins at 0:36

It is a representation of the musical transcription from Justin Garrett Binek's academic study “Ella Fitzgerald: syllabic choice in scat singing and her timbral syllabic development between 1944 and 1947” (page 23) PDF. This study looks at the evolution of Fitzgerald's style and notes this performance of this tune as a turning point.

Improvisation invovles varying degrees of inventiveness or composition through performance. It should be noted, then, that the text above was not not composed, written, or planned in any usual sense prior to the performance.

For implicit evidence of this, note other available recordings of Ella Fitzgerald peforming “Lady Be Good” with very different scat solos:

1. Lady Be Good, TV Performance, aired date March 24, 1957 Begins 0:36
2. Lady Be Good, Nobody's Fool, Chicago 1981 begins at 3:45