There’s a long and storied tradition of vocalese in jazz – the writing of new lyrics to recorded jazz solos. It gave singers the opportunity to tackle first bebop, and then more current, instrumental phrasing without scatting, and gave us many beautiful lyrics courtesy of Eddie Jefferson, Jon Hendricks, Mark Murphy, and many others. For example, here’s Jon Hendricks’ lyrics to the Count Basie orchestra’s band parts in “Every Day I Have The Blues”:
Recently, though, I’ve noticed a couple examples of what I would call “reverse vocalese.” What I mean is, taking lyrics with no pitch and adding melody. With the explosion of brilliant, complex hip hop lyrics, there are many words to choose from with complex rhythms suitable for reverse vocalese. I think we can expect more of this over time – imagine Kurt Elling transforming a Black Thought lyric into a jazz tour de force!
Here are a couple examples I’ve noticed from very recent releases. Have you heard other examples of this?
which was adapted from this early-’90s song from US3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2WFlPM5EeI
Or listen to what “Weird” Al Yankovic has done with the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda: