“I Got the Heebies!”: 100 Years of “Heebie Jeebies”

If you happened to be watching Jeopardy! last night, February 25, 2026, you would have seen the following Louis Armstrong-related clue:

The timing of that clip could not have been planned any better as today is the 100th anniversary of the landmark recording of “Heebie Jeebies.”

First, though, a declaration: there have been countless influential instrumentalists across the history of music and countless influential vocalists–but Louis Armstrong is the only figure who completely changed the way people played music on their instruments and he completely changed the way people sang. And he did it all 100 years ago today.

For the instrumental side of things, look no further than “Cornet Chop Suey,” the third song recorded by the Hot Five at the landmark session on February 26, 1926:

That recording was released in the summer of 1926 and sent off shockwaves in the jazz world, influencing trumpet players, saxophonists, trombonists, pianists, anyone trying to figure the mysteries of how to take a flowing, improvised solo. (For more on “that recording “Cornet Chop Suey” and this period of Armstrong’s life, please see my 2025 book, Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong.)

But for today’s purposes, we’re going to focus on Armstrong’s first real hit and a song that really impacted the course of American popular singing, “Heebie Jeebies”–the song that put “scat” singing on the map. We’re going to open up our Archives and try to tell the legendary tale of this recording from every angle.

First, a brief history of Armstrong and “scat,” the word coined (after “Heebie Jeebies”) to described the process of using one’s voice to mimic the sound of instruments through the use of nonsense syllables. Armstrong’s first musical venture was a vocal quartet he started on the streets of New Orleans when he was around the age of 11. One of the members of the quartet was future drummer James “Red Happy” Bolton, who apparently was a natural showman, one who loved to comedically use his voice like an instrument. “Yeah, he did a lot of scat singing,” drummer Paul Barbarin once said of Bolton. Armstrong clearly picked up the habit in this early period, explaining to Studs Terkel, “You make the same notes, you know, like the horn. That’s why we could scat and do things like that. I always would sing. I was singing before I played the horn, see.”

Flash forward to 1920 and Armstrong was now coming into his own as a member of Fate Marable’s Jaz-E-Saz Orchestra playing on the Mississippi River. In addition to his cornet, slide whistle, and slide trumpet solos, Armstrong was also now letting his personality flower in the band’s nightly performances. “Anyway, the Captain used to insist on somebody singing and of course, Louis tried to sing on there one day,” the band’s other cornetist, Norman Mason said. “And he got to sing the words and of course, he forgot the words and that’s where he start doing all that garbling up and scatting!” It should be pointed out that also in the Marable’s band was a violinist and saxophonist named Boyd Atkins.

Armstrong didn’t get to do much singing during his time with King Oliver in Chicago and when he joined Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City, Henderson discouraged his vocalizing, too. But on Thursday evening “Vaudeville Nights,” Armstrong began singing “Everybody Loves My Baby.” Drummer Vic Berton, who played with Sam Lanin’s group on the opposite bandstand, remembered, “I recall the first time Armstrong ever stood up and did a vocal chorus. The wordless vocalizing for which he is noted is something he originally did spontaneously while sitting in the band and not playing. It never occurred to him to stand up and do it for the benefit of an audience until the manager of the Roseland heard him and, after much persuasion, induced him to stand up and do it for the crowd. It was an instant success with the customers.”

But other than those “Vaudeville Night” performances, Henderson seemed embarrassed of Armstrong’s vocalizing. “As Fletcher was concerned, singing was out the whole time I was in his band,” Armstrong wrote to Max Jones in 1970. “He wouldn’t even listen to me sing nothing. All the singing that I did before I joined Fletcher Henderson’s band went down the drain the whole time that I was with him. So you can imagine how glad that I was to join my wife Lil and her fine band.”

Lil, of course, was Louis’s new bride Lillian Hardin Armstrong, who sent for Louis to return to Chicago to join her “fine band” at the Dreamland Cafe in November 1925. Lil let Elmer A. Fearn of OKeh Records know that Louis was coming back and Fearn set up the first “Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five” date on November 12, 1925. We chronicled that entire session and the events leading up to it in a post we made for the centennial last November.

The breakout song from that session was “Gut Bucket Blues,” which spotlighted Armstrong’s larger-than-life personality and his gruff voice. But he didn’t sing on that one, instead sticking to just cheerleading for the other members of the Hot Five. Fearn must have made a note to himself that he liked Armstrong’s voice and would showcase it more the next time the group would assemble to record.

That time would arrive in February 1926. Armstrong prepared for the session by doing favors for his friends and fellow bandmates. Banjoist Johnny St. Cyr would bring in his original composition “Oriental Strut,” Lil penned “You’re Next,” trombonist Kid Ory contributed “Muskrat Ramble” (though Louis disputed that, saying Ory simply named it), and Louis himself brought “Cornet Chop Suey” (which he wrote back in 1924). Louis also wanted some of his friends to get an extra taste, recording “Come Back Sweet Papa” on February 22, a tune written by two old associates from New Orleans who were now living in Chicago, pianist Luis Russell and drummer Paul Barbarin. Finally, Armstrong’s old bandmate in the Fate Marable group, Boyd Atkins, was also in Chicago and had written an instrumental he called “Heebie Jeebies,” named after The Light and Heebie Jeebies, an African American periodical started in Chicago in 1925 by Percival L. Prattis of the Chicago Defender.

E. A. Fearn was fine with Armstrong recording all of these compositions–his Consolidated Music Publishing Corporation would pay extra to obtain the publishing rights–but the music industry being what it was at the time, Fearn did ask the Hot Five to record one selection: “Georgia Grind.” The previous year, banjoist Papa Charlie Jackson recorded “Shake That Thing” for Paramount Records, a 12-bar blues about a dance in Georgia that positively exploded after it was covered by Ethel Waters for Columbia Records. Here’s Jackson’s original:

And here’s Ethel Waters, recorded December 23, 1925:

As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form for flattery; in January 1925, prolific African American composer Spencer Williams published the “Georgia Grind,” a “Shake That Thing” soundalike right down to the Georgia setting. Williams had an in with the recording industry so it probably didn’t take much prodding for him to convince OKeh to make a record of his tune as soon as possible. The Hot Five was due to record on February 26, so they’d kick off the session with “Georgia Grind.”

Armstrong’s voice had appeared on record on “Gut Bucket Blues” and at the end of Fletcher Henderson’s “Everybody Loves My Baby,” but he hadn’t ever recorded a proper vocal until “Georgia Grind.” Even then, it’s not exactly “proper” as Armstrong spends much of his time shouting the blues, almost half-talking, but when he does sing “doing the Georgia Grind,” the result is mellifluous. It’s also appropriate that his first official vocal on record is done as a duet with Lil as without Lil, he would most likely have not even been in the position to make such a record at that time. Here ’tis!

With one song out of the way, it was time to record Boyd Atkins’s “Heebie Jeebies.” But after hearing Armstrong on “Georgia Grind,” Fearn had a request. “The composition was only an instrumental and Mr. Fearn insisted on a vocal chorus, so Louis wrote down some words which he did not have time to rehearse or memorize, and he had to read them when it came time for him to sing,” Johnny St. Cyr recalled. This is when the story of “Heebie Jeebies” gets embroiled in myth-vs.-reality debates, but the memories of those present, such as St. Cyr, do tend to support the myth.

After a short rehearsal, in which they worked out a cute ending where Lil would play a “Charleston” rhythm and the fellows would each shout a line in response, Fearn asked the group to attempt a master take. Here’s how it went down (most versions are YouTube, including the official ones presented by Sony, are in the wrong key; this video is in the correct one):

Midway through the first vocal chorus, disaster struck—and history was made. “So we went ahead to making a master and Louie got to singing the ‘Heebie Jeebies’ and the paper slipped out of his hands!” St. Cyr said. “I dropped that paper with the lyrics on it,” Armstrong remembered. “So, I started to stop and Mr. Fearn, who was the president of the OKeh records…he kept on saying, ‘Keep on! Keep on!'”

There does seem to be a slight moment of panic during the tenth bar of his first vocal chorus, as Armstrong stops singing his rudimentary lyrics and mumbles something akin to “You don’t dobo,” sounding a bit lost. He finishes the chorus, even emitting a righteous “Yes ma’am,” but with another chorus to follow and his lyrics on the floor, he had to think fast. That’s when it came to him: the wordless vocalizing he first did with his quartet in New Orleans, which Norman Mason remembered him doing with Fate Marable, which Clyde Bernhardt and Vic Berton remembered him doing with Fletcher Henderson. Armstrong attributed his quick-thinking to his “presence of mind. And you can think of things that happened years ago in some spot like that and save the day sometimes.”

Armstrong transformed his voice into an instrument for the next chorus, swinging just as hard as if he had been playing his trumpet, which made sense since, in his mind, it was all connected. “See, and we [were] always music-minded in New Orleans, and every note that I’d scat on, I’m thinking about the trumpet anyway,” he said, adding, “But you can bet my fingers are going right down the horn every time I sing a note. See? So I wasn’t afraid about this, Pops.” The syllables flowed from Armstrong’s voice so smoothly, that it seemed hard to believe that this could actually be a spur-of-the-moment creation—especially when the story eventually took on mythical status with the release of the Columbia album King Louis in 1940, which we discussed in this post. Here’s Louis’s copy:

Produced by 21-year-old Yale student George Avakian, King Louis represented the first major label reissue of some of Armstrong’s Hot Five output in album form. Pianist Richard M. Jones was in charge of OKeh’s “race record” series, but both Armstrong and St. Cyr downplayed his involvement in the actual sessions. Still, Jones was a good promoter and storyteller so when Avakian interviewed him while putting together the set, Jones went overboard with his version of the saga of “Heebie Jeebies,” turning the situation into something reminiscent of a Three Stooges short. Here’s the passage, as related by Avakian:

The “recording director” in that passage was Jones. After Jones passed away in 1945, Avakian dismissed Jones’s exaggerated version in this piece from 1950:

“The story about how scat singing was born is one of those colorful things which probably isn’t true, although Richard M. Jones always claimed that it was. He was a recording director for OKEH in those days, and Louis was to sing for the first time on records on one of the dates he handled.
“The tune was Boyd Atkins’ ‘Heebie Jeebies’: Louis didn’t know the words, but Jones gave him a lead sheet with lyrics.
“As you can hear on the record, Louis sailed through the first of the choruses he was to sing, and then (the story goes) he dropped the lyric sheet. He went down to the floor after it, singing a meaningless jabber of monosyllables as he fumbled for the elusive manuscript. Jones came to his rescue; they bumped heads and got in each other’s way, and by the time Louis got the manuscript in his hands again–upside down–the chorus was nearly over. He found his place just six bars from the end.
“The engineers kept recording all the way through, and the playback sounded so fresh that Jones approved release of the master. Scat singing was born.
“It’s a good story and it’s not exactly fair to Jones, who isn’t around to say more, to say that it seems a little too good. Jones originally told the story saying that Louis pulled the microphone down to the floor with him–but the recording was acoustically made. And if Louis did duck to the floor, how could his voice still have ‘presence’ after he moved away from the stationary recording horn, which was undoubtedly fixed head high? “Better not to ask. The record is fun and it tells its story; as usual the moral is ‘Louis did it first–and still best.'”

Jones’s exaggerations with microphones (which weren’t used yet in OKeh’s Chicago studio), bonking heads, and upside down sheet music are quite ridiculous, but it should be stressed that Armstrong never claimed anything like that. We shared this back in December, but it’s worth sharing again: Armstrong’s introduction to “Heebie Jeebies” from a Voice of Amercia broadcast in July 1956:

After playing the record, here’s Armstrong’s recap:

It’s interesting to point out that what Armstrong does claim–he dropped the piece of paper with the lyrics and scatted the rest of the vocal–was never completely contradicted by the other members present that day. “That was the record where Louis forgot the lyrics and started scattin’,” Kid Ory said. “We had all we could do to keep from laughing. Of course, Louis said he forgot the words, but I don’t know if he intended it that way or not. It made the record, though.” “I don’t know whether he planned to scat it or not,” Lil admitted. “But I know ever since Louis had started working alone that he would always add little extra touches to things and little comical things to his work. So it must be true that he forgot the words and started scatting.”

Johnny St. Cyr corroborated all of the details of Armstrong’s version. “On the ‘Heebie Jeebies’ when we were recording the master and it was time for Louis to do the vocal he sung half of the words and the paper dropped from his hand,” St. Cyr related. “To avoid spoiling the record and having to do it all over again, he just gave out with some queer sounds such as Boo Boo Pa Doop, Boo Boo, Frinie, Nacki Sacki, and others that do not make sense, which was later known as the Scat theme. Nevertheless, we got a good laugh out of it.” Here’s audio of St. Cyr, taken from his Tulane oral history:

Back to the recording, in addition to the momentary stutter in the first chorus, there’s an even bigger mistake at the end when Kid Ory comes in too early with his shout of, “Whatcha doin’ with the Heebies?” resulting in an awkward moment of silence where his voice was supposed to be. Under normal circumstances, Fearn would have requested one more take to iron out the routine, but even he knew there was something spontaneous about that vocal that could not be replicated. “Hell, we’re going to take a chance with this one,” Armstrong remembered Fearn saying.

This, and other quotes from earlier, come from a tape-recorded conversation Armstrong had with George Avakin at his home in Corona, Queens in 1953, when Avakian tried to press Armstrong on what actually happened in the studio that day. First, here’s the audio, with a transcription to follow:

George Avakian: Louis, I want to settle one old story once and for all, the “Heebie Jeebies” story, you know? Let me tell- [INAUDIBLE]. Keep going.
Louis Armstrong: Yeah, go ahead-
George Avakian: Let me tell you what Richard M. Jones claims, that it was all an accident and that you were going to sing two choruses in a row and you dropped the music and you just scatted to cover yourself, and everybody started laughing toward the end of the record and-
Louis Armstrong: Yeah. Well, you know, not to cut you off, we- we did that in New Orleans, scatting and things, we were always- like Jelly Roll says, been scatting. But who- whoever started it, no one can say because even when we was a kid, we’d, [SCATTING]. You know, and swing like instruments and things, just like riffs and things. It’s why I can do that now. The things I make on my horn, I can riff them.
George Avakian: [INAUDIBLE] street corner. 
Louis Armstrong: Yeah. That’s where it comes from. Yeah. That’s where it comes from. Right on the corner over a can of beer.
George Avakian: Did you do it intentionally on “Heebie Jeebies”?
Louis Armstrong: No. It’s one of them things. Quick-Thinking Sam. You ever hear the one about Quick-Thinking Sam? You know, it’s spur of the moment. You know, presence of mind and- and you can think of things that happened years ago in some spot like that and save the day sometimes. Just like telling you about Bing and that “My Honey’s Loving Arms”? Well, that has happened when we was playing in New Orleans. Cats meet every night and never see each other and they play a- play a whole job. Well, if somebody go wrong or something, there’s always somebody that come up and save the day. Well, that’s where that “Heebie Jeebie,” when Mr. Fearn pointed through that glass and- “Keep on,” he says. 
George Avakian: Oh, you so actually did drop the music.
Louis Armstrong: Yeah. Well, sure. I mean, “I got the Heebies, I got the Jeebies”- well, it dropped and Mr. Fearn say, “Keep on.” Well, there ain’t nothin’ to do there but put music in it. See, and we always music-minded in New Orleans, and every note that I’d scat on, I’m thinking about the trumpet anyway.  Now, whoever scat, whoever- other person scat, I don’t know what they’re thinking about. But you can bet my fingers are going right down the horn every time I say a note. See? So I wasn’t afraid about this, Pops. And they just didn’t want to waste all the masters and he thought it was a good idea. And it was his idea that-
George Avakian: One take and that was it, huh?
Louis Armstrong: Yeah. And that’s his idea and it turned out all right because before that, the records had to be so perfect, you know, and [SCATTING]. You know?
And he said, “Hell, we’re going to take a chance with this one.”

Armstrong also referred to his “presence of mine” in a 1945 interview with disc jockey Fred Robbins that appeared in The Jazz Record; here’s the relevant excerpt, with more evidence of Armstrong doing such singing when he was a kid:

Armstrong’s insistance on giving E. A. Fearn so much credit is enlightening, but there is one part of Armstrong’s later versions of the story that does seem to be exaggerated: “When the record was over Mr. Fearn, he came out of the control booth and said, ‘Louis Armstrong, this is where scat was born,’ you see?” Armstrong said in the earlier Voice of America clip. It’s extremely doubtful that Fearn came in and made such a pronouncement. Armstrong wasn’t even the first one to do it on record; Don Redman beat him to the punch on Fletcher Henderson’s 1924 recording of “My Papa Doesn’t Two-Time No Time,” made before Armstrong entered the band:

But it is feasible that Fearn’s knack for marketing kicked in quickly; there wasn’t a word for this type of singing until Fearn published the sheet music in late 1926, calling attention to its “skat” chorus and putting a photo of the Hot Five on the cover for good measure. Eternal thanks to our loyal reader Rob Rothberg for providing this scan of the sheet music:

As can be seen, the sheet music not only includes the word “skat” and some examples of gibberish along the side of the page, it also includes an early publicity photo of the Hot Five, a photo of Boyd Atkins, and a photo of Ethel Waters–which would date this as from the second half of 1926. (More on Waters’s version in a minute.)

Armstrong’s invocation of Jelly Rolly Morton in the Avakian clip refers to Armstrong bristling when he heard Morton’s Library of Congress recordings, specficially the part where Morton “took the credit away” from Armstrong for inventing scat because he and comedian Joe Sims were doing such singing long before “Heebie Jeebies.” Armstrong grabbed his microphone and addressed (the very much dead) Morton, once again giving credit to Fearn. In this case, the argument is clearly about semantics; it cannot be denied that other musicians were doing this type of singing years before “Heebie Jeebies,” including “Red Happy” Bolton in 1911. But Armstrong’s argument is his record is the first time the word “scat” was used to describe it and since it became a hit, it’s really the one that put scatting on the map. (To hear the whole Jelly Roll conversation, click here–you don’t want to miss it!)

OKeh must have known they had something good and soon put “Heebie Jeebies” out as OKeh 8300 (interestingly, Fearn chose the coupling of “You’re Next” and “Oriental Strut” to come out first as OKeh 8299, two fine recordings that didn’t quite change history); here’s the label, giving Atkins full composer credit:

The first ad appeared for it in the Chicago Defender on May 1, 1926:

If we zoom out a bit, Vocalion Records placed an add on the same page directly above OKeh’s ad: one for King Oliver’s big hit, “Snag It.” Mentor and pupil, reunited again, though now pitted as rivals (Armstrong spurned an opportunity to rejoin Oliver in April 1926 and took a job in Carroll Dickerson’s band directly across the street–what drama!):

Just a few days later, on May 6, the Associated Negro Press put out a small blurb on the song, butchering Louis’s name, but giving the record publicity in many Black newspapers:

Sales figures weren’t published in that era, but Armstrong estimated it sold 40,000 copies in its first few weeks on the market. “This record of Louis’ took all of Chicago by storm as soon as it was released,” clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow said. “For months after that you would hear cats greeting each other with Louis’ riffs when they met around town—I got the heebies, one would yell out, and the other would answer I got the jeebies, and the next minute they were scatting in each other’s face. Louis’ recording almost drove the English language out of the Windy City for good.”

“Heebie Jeebies” made Armstrong into a star on the Chicago scene, and was often mentioned in newspaper reports of the time in the Black press, many of which were clipped out and saved in scrapbooks simultaneously compiled by wife Lil and mistress Alpha Smith. Here’s a few examples:

Eventually, Armstrong, Boyd Atkins, and Ethel Waters made the cover of the September 18, 1926 issue of Heebie Jeebies, saved in Louis and Lil’s scrapbook:

It was clear that once Armstrong’s recording “Heebie Jeebies” caught on, Consolidated Music Publishing wanted exploit the song further. Ethel Waters was one of the most popular Black artists of the time so it made sense for her to put her stamp on it, recording it for Columbia on July 29, 1926.

But what of the lyrics? While the press and Fearn’s sheet music gave Atkins credit for music and lyrics, and Richard M. Jones claimed he handed Armstrong a set of lyrics, Armstrong and St. Cyr claimed that it was Louis who jotted down the informal words on the infamous piece of paper he would soon drop once the recording started. Waters would require something a little more formal. Thus, on July 16, a new copyright for “Heebie Jeebies” was registered with the Library of Congress, for the first time giving Atkins and Richard M. Jones credit for both the music and lyrics, and Chicago bandleader Charles A. “Doc” Cooke credit for the arrangement. Here’s the card from the copyright renewal in 1954:

This, to me, gives Armstrong’s story even more validation as his lyrics don’t make a whole lot of sense and as already mentioned, he garbled a few along the way; but Waters, she’s singing a thoroughly composed song. To compare and contrast, here’s what I hear Armstrong singing:

Say, I’ve got the Heebies, I mean the Jeebies,
Talkin’ about, the dance, the Heebie Jeebies
You’ll see girls and boys
Mix it with a little bit of joy!

Say don’t you know it
You don’t debo (???)
Don’t feel blue—someone will teach you!
Come on and do that dance
They call the Heebie Jeebies dance, yes ma’am,
Papa’s got the Heebie Jeebies dance 

And if it helps, here’s a fantastic video contributed by the great scholar Loren Schoenberg, using an AI tool to isolate Armstrong’s vocal:

Now, here’s what Ethel Waters sings on her recording:

Say, I’ve got the Heebies, I mean the Jeebies,
Talkin’ about, those Heebie Jeebies blues,
That the girls and boys
Mix it in with a little bit of joy!
Say don’t you know it,
You should be showing those naughty blues
I want to teach you!
So come on and do that dance, they call the Heebie Jeebies, yes ma’am, mama’s got to do the Heebie Jeebies dance

It’s similar to Armstrong’s version, just a little more polished. And here’s the performance!

Now it’s time to dig further into the commercial sheet music. We’ve already shared the cover but did you know that Atkins (and maybe Jones?) ended up writing two sets of lyrics for both the verse and the chorus and there was a page devoted to Armstrong’s scat singing? Take a look!

Here’s Armstrong “skat” page, not mentioning his name but getting a plug in for OKeh Record 8300:

And finally, check out this back page on the dance that was devised to go along with the song:

If you can’t make it out, the first paragraph states:

“The Heebie Jeebies Dance was originated by Mr. Du Pont to be used primarily as a stage attraction. However, its immediate popularity and ready acceptance by professional dancers throughout the theatrical world prompted him to simplify it to a degree where it may now be enjoyed and easily mastered by everyone. Simply follow carefully the instructions and illustrations as shown below, all of which have been compiled and arranged under the personal supervision of Mr. Du Pont himself.”

After describing the steps, the text says, “To obtain the right tempo (time) for the HEEBIE JEEBIE DANCE, adjust the speed regulator of your phonograph to 90 (ninety revolutions of the turn table to the minute) as shown on the dial; then practice counting, as shown above, in strict tempo to the music.” 90-rpm is quite a step up from the standard 78-rpm! But when it came to getting a record, it instructed, “You may obtain the HEEBIE JEEBIE record at all music stores, or write to the CONSOLIDATED MUSIC PUBLISHING HOUSE, 229 West Washington St., Chicago, Ill. Just ask for OKEH RECORD No. 8300, as this is the record Mr. Du Pont used in casting the HEEBIE JEEBIES DANCE.”

The reminder of 1926 was filled with more recordings of “Heebie Jeebies” but interestingly, the majority were instrumentals. However, two are worth spending some time with. First up is Alberta Hunter’s September 15, 1926 version in which she sings the verse and both choruses as featured in the sheet music. There’s no scatting but trumpeter Jimmy Wade definitely has Louis’s scatting in mind as he leads the ensembe (that’s Arnett Nelson on clarinet, Perry Bradford on piano, and Stanley Wilson on banjo):

But the real fun one was a September 24, 1926 OKeh recording by a white group, The Goofus Five, featuring Ernest Hare on vocals. Hare begins in the polite, crooning style of the day, not exactly swinging. But then at 1:49, watch out! Hare starts scatting, using the syllables as notated in the sheet music–and doing so in a gruff voice! Yes, folks, I think this constitutes the first Louis Armstrong impersonation on record–would you agree? He even replicates the ending–check it out:

Armstrong knew that scat was here to stay, performing “Heebie Jeebies” nightly throughout the rest of 1926 (often scatting through a megaphone) and recording a follow-up, “Skid-Dat-De-Dat” in November 1926. Musicians who listened to Armstrong in this period, from Cab Calloway to Bing Crosby, got the message and helped further the cause of scat. By 1931, the Boswell Sisters of New Orleans recorded their own arrangement of “Heebie Jeebies” clearly inspired by Armstrong’s; here’s a film from that period:

Oddly enough, Armstrong might have burnt himself out on “Heebie Jeebies” as there’s no mention of him performing it live with any regularity after the 1920s; even when Armstrong took over Luis Russell’s big band in the 1930s, the song was only done as a feature for the group’s female vocalist Midge Williams, as opposed to Armstrong. Here’s a live version from around 1938 discovered in a closet belonging to Russell’s wife, multi-instrumentalist Carline Ray, and issued for the first time in 2023:

By the late 1940s, Armstrong began looking backwards a bit with the formation of his small group, the All Stars. Still, he didn’t perform “Heebie Jeebies” at the seminal 1947 Town Hall concert (though he did two of the other February 26, 1926 selections, “Cornet Chop Suey” and “Muskrat Ramble”), nor did he ever seem to do it live with his regular groups. But on September 3, 1949, he appeared on an episode of the Eddie Condon Floor Show and turned in this absolutely smoking hot version, backed by Condon’s guitar, future All Stars Peanuts Hucko on clarinet and Jack Lesberg on bass, current All Stars Jack Teagarden on trombone and Earl Hines on piano, and one of the drummers featured at that Town Hall concert, George Wettling. Armstrong tells the tale of dropping the paper and then recreates it with the backing of Condon’s guitar and lot more hot trumpet (listen as Hucko opens by quoting Armstrong’s original scat solo). Here it is, courtesy of YouTube:

Armstrong did have one last rendezvous with “Heebie Jeebies,” remaking it for the massive Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography project for Decca on January 24, 1957. As a bonus, Armstrong’s friends Jeann Failows and Paul Studer were in the studio that day, covering the session as correspondents for the Bulletin du Hot Club de France. Here is a translation of Failows’s paragraph on “Heebie Jeebies” from the original French:

“Heebie-Jeebies: Louis, who had until now graciously accepted all suggestions regarding the orchestration, modifying them diplomatically when necessary, attaches particular importance to ‘Heebie Jeebies’ and, from the start, imposes his conception. No one dares or even thinks of contradicting him. Starting as in the Hot Five, Louis’s vocal break to which Trummy responds. Then collective, clarinet solo, Louis’s vocal, 8 bars of trombone, collective, vocal breaks by Louis and Trummy, then collective and final ‘queue.'”

In addition, Failows took notes on all the changes Louis made from take to take. Sadly, the session tapes no longer exist for Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography so no alternates have ever been issued and there’s not even a record of how many takes were attempted for each performance. But Failows noted that there were five attempts at “Heebie Jeebies,” each one with differences; Louis had the sheet music as Bob Haggart made an arrangement, but perhaps he wanted to retain the freshness of the original by coming up with something new each time out. Here’s Failow’s notes:

Here’s the 24-second introduction Louis recorded for the remake, short and sweet:

And here’s the full remake:

Fun! And tighter (and faster) than the original, with the final shouts executed properly. If you’d like some visuals as you listen, Paul Studer brought along his camera to the session and though we can’t be certain these images were taken during the recording of “Heebie Jeebies,” they’re indicative of the high spirits prevalent during the recording.

Here’s Louis smiling as he goes over a chart with arranger Bob Haggart and producer Milt Gabler:

Here’s Louis in the middle of a euphoric vocal, flanked by Edmond Hall on clarinet and Trummy Young on trombone:

Blurry, but still joyful (that’s drummer Barrett Deems and bassist Squire Gersh in the barckround):

One more of Louis smiling at the microphone:

Naturally, the 1957 remake of “Heebie Jeebies” didn’t change history, but it didn’t have to, nor was it expected to. The real history was changed 100 years ago today. Some folks will continue to argue about what happened or didn’t happen at the February 26, 1926 session, others will downplay Armstrong’s role in the evolution of scat singing, pointing to earlier recorded evidence. But even scatting aside, the pure vivacity of his vocal—including interjections not commonly found in 1920s pop singing such as “Yes ma’am!” and “Sweet mama!”—represented a seismic shift in how singers could approach a text and breathe new life into it. Armstrong claimed singing was in his blood before the trumpet and after patiently waiting in silence through his tenures with Oliver and Henderson, he managed to rewrite the rules of American pop singing with his second full vocal on record.

Nothing would ever be the same.