If you listen to 1950’s teen music, the singers of the era use a lot of weird vocal sounds…stuff like “doo-wop”, “shi boom-shi boom”, woo-ah…woo-ah", etc.
Is there a musical term for this?
Are these phrases added to make the lyrics rhyme, or do they have some unknown (to me) meaning?
Backup scat. And at least one song is actually named for the scat, not the words.
Yeah, there was a lot of scatological singing going on back then.
The genre, where early R&R was teamed with scat, is commonly known as ‘Doo Wop’.
I admire the OP’s curiosity and I try not to be judgmental, especially in matters of musical taste, but if I ever go to hell and have my own personal sound track, it will be all doo-wop. I other words, the more I can get by without thinking about that style of music, the happier I am. I don’t know why I hate it so much since I was never exposed to it except maybe on the oldies stations in the 80’s, and even there it was already circling the bowl.