Huey Long (singer) Huey Long (singer) Huey Long (April 25, 1904 – June 10, 2009) was an American jazz and swing singer-songwriter and musician and was a member of the close harmony vocal traditional pop group The Ink Spots. Born in Sealy, Texas, Long began his musical career in 1925 playing banjo for Frank Davis' Louisiana Jazz Band, based in Houston. He switched from the banjo to the guitar after moving to Chicago, where he appeared at the 1933 World's Fair with Texas Guinan's Cuban Orchestra. He performed with artists such as Lil Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, and his career also encompassed sideman,
Vocal jazz with a more "bluesy" tone of voice; one of the first "jazz" recordings, the 1917 Original Dixieland Jass Band recordings featured Sara Martin as vocalist. It was Louis Armstrong who established singing as a distinct art form in jazz, realising that a singer could improvise in the same manner as an instrumentalist, and along with American vocalist Adelaide Hall they established scat singing as a central pillar of the jazz vocal art. A frequently repeated legend alleges that Louis Armstrong invented scat singing when he dropped the lyric sheet while singing on his 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies". Jazz musicians