Re: Raymond Scott

[Eliezer Kaplan <zelwel...>]

> Which recording do you know the piece from?  

This one: 
>Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights [37] - Scott, Raymond
 and this one:
>Celebration on the Planet Mars: a Tribu [95] - Beau Hunks

How would you know Scott's music? 
>From all those Stalling cartoons, of course. 

A recommendation:
If this interests you at all, go check out the 'Restless Nights and Turkish 
Twilights' CD. 

I'd stay away from the oddball 60's stuff, though (Soothing Sounds...)- believe 
it or not, much more nerve-wracking (to my ears) than soothing.

                                    Ellie Kaplan



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: robert wiener 
  To: World music from a Jewish slant 
  Sent: Sunday, October 31, 1999 9:47 AM
  Subject: Re: Raymond Scott


  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)?