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Re: Raymond Scott
- From: robert wiener <wiener...>
- Subject: Re: Raymond Scott
- Date: Sun 31 Oct 1999 15.48 (GMT)
Eliezer,
Which recording do you know the piece from? The All Music Guide lists several:
on Celebration on the Planet Mars: a Tribu [95] - Beau Hunks
on Re/Search: Incredibly Strange Music, Vo [94] - Incredibly Strange Music
on Powerhouse, Vol. 1 [49] - Scott, Raymond
on Powerhouse, Vol. 1 [35] - Scott, Raymond
Released: 1985 - 1995 [95] - Kronos Quartet
on Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights [37] - Scott, Raymond
Perhaps it's one of those pieces that I'd know it if I heard it, but how would
we know it? (Or Raymond Scott's other work, for that matter.)
Bob
P.S. I just found the following at www.allmusic.com
Raymond Scott AKA born: Harry Warnow
Born Sep 10, 1908 in Brooklyn, NY
Died Feb 8 , 1994 in North Hills, CA
Genres Jazz
Styles Novelty, Electronic, Swing
Instruments Piano, Drums
Labels Basta (3), Hindsight (2)
Composer, bandleader and inventor Raymond Scott was among the unheralded
pioneers of
contemporary experimental music, a figure whose genius and influence have
seeped almost
subliminally into the mass cultural consciousness. As a visionary whose name
is largely unknown but
whose music is immediately recognizable, Scott's was a career stuffed with
contradictions: though his
early work anticipated the breathless invention of bebop, his obsession with
perfectionism and
memorization was the very antithesis of jazz's improvisational ethos; though
his best-known
compositions remain at large thanks to their endless recycling as soundtracks
for cartoons, he never
once wrote a note expressly for animated use; and though his later experiments
with electronic music
pioneered the ambient aesthetic, the ambient concept itself was not introduced
until a decade after
the release of his original recordings.
Born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn on September 10, 1908, he was a musical prodigy,
playing piano
by the age of two; following high school, he planned to study engineering, but
his older brother Mark
-- himself a successful violinist and conductor -- had other ideas, buying his
sibling a Steinway Grand
and persuading him to attend the Institute of Musical Art, later rechristened
the Julliard School. After
graduating in 1931, Scott -- the name supposedly picked at random out of the
Manhattan phone
book -- signed on as a staff pianist with the CBS radio network house band
conducted by his
brother; finding the repertoire dull and uninspired, he began presenting his
own compositions to his
bandmates, and soon bizarre Scott originals like "Confusion Among a Fleet of
Taxicabs Upon
Meeting with a Fare" began creeping into broadcasts.
Scott remained a member of the CBS band until 1936, at which time he
convinced producer Herb
Rosenthal to allow him the chance to form his own group; assembling a line-up
originally comprised
of fellow network veterans Lou Shoobe on bass, Dave Harris on tenor saxophone,
Pete Pumiglio on
clarinet, Johnny Williams on drums and the famed Bunny Berigan on trumpet, he
dubbed the group
the Raymond Scott Quintette, debuting on the Saturday Night Swing Session with
the song "The
Toy Trumpet." The Quintette was an immediate hit with listeners, and Scott was
soon offered a
recording contract with the Master label. Dissent quickly broke out in the
group's ranks, however, as
Scott's obsessive practice schedule began to wear out his bandmates; Berigan
soon quit, frustrated
because the airtight compositions -- never written down, taught and developed
one oddball phrase
at a time -- allowed no room for improvisations.
Still, for all of Scott's eccentricities, his records flew off the shelves,
their dadaist titles ("Dinner
Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," "Reckless Night on Board an Oceanliner"
and "Boy Scout
in Switzerland"), juxtaposed melodies, odd time signatures and quirky
arrangements somehow
connecting with mainstream American audiences. Hollywood soon came calling,
with the Quintette
performing music for (and sometimes appearing in) features including Nothing
Sacred, Ali Baba
Goes to Town and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Upon returning to New York, in
1938 Scott
was tapped to become CBS' next music director; around the same time he
expanded the Quintette
to big-band size, and by 1940 quit his network position to lead his ensemble
on tour. He returned to
CBS in 1942, however, assembling the first racially-mixed studio orchestra in
broadcast history.
In 1941, Warner Bros.' fledgling animation department bought the rights to
Scott's back catalog,
with music director Carl Stalling making liberal use of the melodies in his
groundbreaking
cut-and-paste cartoon soundtracks; Quintette favorites like the rollicking
"Powerhouse" soon
became immediately recognizable for their regular appearances in classic Bugs
Bunny, Daffy Duck
and Porky Pig clips, the same music supporting the crazed antics of Ren &
Stimpy and others half a
century later. Indeed, generations upon generations of young viewers have
received an unwitting
introduction to avant-garde concepts through their repeated exposure to Scott
and Stalling's music,
although none of the former's compositions were written with cartoons in mind;
by the time Warner
Bros. began using Scott's music on a regular basis in 1943, he had already
moved on to new
projects, including a lucrative career authoring commercial jingles.
In 1945, Scott wrote incidental music for the Broadway production Beggars Are
Coming to Town;
the year following, he teamed with lyricist Bernard Hanighen on the musical
Lute Song, which
yielded another of his best known songs, "Mountain High, Valley Low." Also in
1946, Scott founded
Manhattan Research, the world's first electronic music studio; housing
equipment including a
Martenot, an Ondioline and a specially-modified Hammond organ, it was
advertised as "the world's
most extensive facility for the creation of Electronic Music and Musique
Concrete." After his brother
Mark's 1949 death, Scott took over his duties as the bandleader on the
syndicated radio favorite
Your Hit Parade, with his second wife Dorothy Collins soon assuming the
position as the program's
featured vocalist; that same year, he also scored theatrical productions of
Peep Show and Six
Characters in Search of an Author.
Of all of Scott's accomplishments of 1949, however, none was more important
than the Electronium,
one of the first synthesizers ever created. An "instantaneous composing
machine," the Electronium
generated original music via random sequences of tones, rhythms, and timbres;
Scott himself denied
it was a prototype synthesizer -- it had no keyboard -- but as one of the
first machines to create
music by means of artificial intelligence, its importance in pointing the way
towards the electonic
compositions of the future is undeniable. His other inventions included the
"Karloff," an early sampler
capable of recreating sounds ranging from sizzling steaks to jungle drums; the
Clavinox, a keyboard
Theremin complete with an electronic sub-assembly designed by a then
23-year-old Robert Moog;
and the Videola, which fused together a keyboard and a TV screen to aid in
composing music for
films and other moving images.
In addition to hosting Your Hit Parade, Scott continued recording throughout
the 1950s, issuing
LPs including This Time with Strings, At Home with Dorothy and Raymond and
Rock and Roll
Symphony. Additionally, he cranked out advertising jingles at an astonishing
rate, scored countless
film and television projects and even founded a pair of record labels,
Audiovox and Master, while
serving as A&R director for Everest Records. During the mid-1950s, Scott
assembled a new
Quintette; the 1962 edition of the group was its last. The year following, he
began work on the
three-volume LP set Soothing Sounds for Baby, an "aural toy" designed to
create a comforting yet
stimulating environment for infants. As electronic music produced to inspire
and relax, the records fit
snugly into the definition of ambient suggested by Brian Eno a decade later,
their minimalist
dreamscapes also predating Philip Glass and Terry Riley.
By the middle of the 1960s, Scott began turning increasingly away from
recording and performing to
focus on writing and inventing; a 1969 musical celebrating the centennial of
Kentucky Bourbon was
his last orchestral work, with his remaining years spent solely on electronic
composition. Among his
latter-day innovations was an early programmable polyphonic sequencer, which
along with the
Electronium later caught the attention of Motown chief Berry Gordy Jr., who in
1971 tapped Scott
to head the label's electronic music research and development team. After
retiring six years later, he
continued writing -- his last known piece, 1986's "Beautiful Little
Butterfly," was created on MIDI
technology. By 1992, Scott's music was finally rediscovered by contemporary
audiences, with the
Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights compilation appearing to great acclaim;
he died on
February 8, 1994 at the age of 85. -- Jason Ankeny, All-Music Guide
-----Original Message-----
From: Eliezer Kaplan <zelwel (at) earthlink(dot)net>
To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Date: Sunday, October 31, 1999 10:19 AM
Subject: Raymond Scott
Anybody ever notice how Raymond Scott's (Harry Warnow- he WAS Jewish,
wasn't he?) 'Dinner Music For a Pack of Hungry Cannibals' resembles 'Am Yisrael
Chai' (unintentionally, I hope)?