Jeff Winner of RaymondScott.com on a research expedition at
UMKC's Marr Archives, June 2008, reviewing archival press clippings
The
Raymond Scott audio collection (thousands of discs and tapes from 1930 to 1980) were donated to the
Marr Sound Archives at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in 1995. Here's a great
6-minute tour of the place, "Momentum and Marr," produced, directed, and edited by
Jordan Kerfeld in 2008.
In the mini-doc, Marr director
Chuck Haddix explains his mission: "I don't collect records—I collect collectors."
Hat tip to our buddy Mark Greenberg at the
Mayfair Workshop blog for noting the video and providing a concise overview of what's in the collection. As a member of Chicago's legendary
Coctails, Mark was in the forefront of the Scott revival. The band was performing "Powerhouse" in 1991, when Scott was still a
forgotten footnote in music history.
Our Raymond Scott CD releases (on
Basta) were compiled from recordings stored at Marr. On a number of occasions,
Gert-Jan Blom,
Jeff Winner, and I have conducted on-site audio archeology for such projects as
Manhattan Research, Inc.,
Microphone Music, and
Ectoplasm. More releases are planned; it's a deep collection of unheard music. Scott was a maniac about recording rehearsals, demos, radio airchecks, mic placement takes, and idea development. An electronica follow-up to
Manhattan Research is in the pipeline.
Unfortunately, despite technological progress in field of archiving science, not everything can be restored and preserved:
