Where Scooby Doo Really Came From

Among my favorite pieces of bathroom graffiti is this terse philosophical summary:

To be is to do. -- Immanuel Kant
To do is to be. -- Jean Paul Sartre
Doo-be-doo-be-doo -- Frank Sinatra

Now, Frank Sinatra may have been many things, but a scattin’, be-boppin’ hep cat was not one of them. Still, when he doo-be-doo-be-doo’ed his way through the end of the hit 1966 song “Strangers In The Night,” it showed just how mainstream scat singing had become. And any lingering doubts were dispelled when the hit cartoon series Scooby Doo Where Are You began running in the early 70s. Even a kid like me knew what the name Scooby Doo referred to.

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong often incorporated scat in their singing, but for me, the real revelation of how musical scatting could be came when I discovered the music of Betty Roché. A former Ellington singer who had the misfortune to be working with Duke during the recording ban of World War II, Roché released a single album in the 50s, called Take The A Train. It featured a bunch of Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn compositions, an absolute killer version of “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine,” and songs where Roché sings one verse and then spends practically the whole rest of the song scatting. And some of the scatting wasn’t the usual “shooby-dooby-doolya-da” stuff – she breaks into phrases like “Frankie and Johnny were lovers” (while scatting over the changes from “Route 66”), and “I cover the waterfront” – brief allusions to older songs that have become jazz standards. For me this was a learning experience, because while she was obviously singing these phrases for a reason, and I didn’t know what that reason was. Eventually I’d track down some of the old songs that people like Betty Roché and Ella Fitzgerald would quote from in their scatting – almost a be-bop predecessor to hip-hop’s sampling techniques.

The Roché album also showed me that a little scat goes a long way. All of the album’s uptempo numbers feature a fair amount of scatting, and while I like each track individually, together they’re a bit much.