Heebie Jeebies (composition)
| "Heebie Jeebies" | |
|---|---|
| Song |
"Heebie Jeebies" is a composition written by Boyd Atkins and achieved fame when it was recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1926. The recording on Okeh Records by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five includes a famous chorus of scat singing. As popular legend goes, Louis Armstrong dropped his lyric sheet while recording the song and thus, for lack of words to sing, began to improvise and thus created the sub-genre and technique of scat. While "Heebie Jeebies" may be one of the first fine recorded examples of scat, this story has been proven untrue, as scat was already in rampant use as early as the 1910s, being developed along with ragtime music. Armstrong did, however, confirm in his memoirs that he indeed dropped the lyric sheet.