Re: Raymond Scott

[robert wiener <wiener...>]

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)?