Random Raymond

FastRMacR discovers where Soul Coughing lifted the cartoonish sample that yoyos through "Disseminated" on their album Irresistible Bliss.



Dilla's Donuts, which throws a street slouch on Scott's "Lightworks," steers new fans to Raymond.





We'd love Deerhoof even if one of the bandmates didn't claim to be influenced by Scott. Who knew?






And Smooth Harold asks: "Where would dance, hip-hop, Eighties, and electronic music be without Raymond Scott?" (Ed.: A month behind schedule?)

Raymond in the Freak Zone

Mimi, wife of our Bran Flakes buddy Otis Fodder, relays:

"Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone, my favoritest show on BBC 6 (or BBC Radio) will have a small feature on Raymond Scott on Sunday's show (Dec 9). All shows are archived."

Quartet SF earns Grammy nod

Quartet San Francisco's new CD, Whirled Chamber Music, which features seven rocking string quartet arrangements of Raymond Scott compositions, has been nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the Best Classical Crossover category.

The AllMusic Guide calls Whirled "an extraordinary, strings-only counterpart to clarinetist Don Byron's Bug Music -- rapidly spinning, jazzy, contemporary-sounding chamber music."

This is the second consecutive QSF project to achieve the distinction. Their previous CD, Látigo, was nominated in 2006.

Mutato

LA WEEKLY: One filing box is marked "Raymond Scott notes," Scott being one of the most important and underappreciated musical minds of the 20th century. [Mark] Mothersbaugh rescued much of the writing and paperwork from Scott’s garage, and though the two only met once, they seem like kindreds. In the 1930s and 1940s, Scott composed wildly imaginative and mathematical big-band music before abruptly changing gears in the late '40s to start building early electronic instruments. He earned his living by using the machines to craft radio commercials for, among others, Vicks Medicated Cough Drops, Bendix ("The Tomorrow People") and Auto-Lite Spark Plugs. Standing majestically in one corner of Mutato's basement is perhaps the Holy Grail of early electronic-music instrumentation: Raymond Scott's legendary Electronium, considered to be the first-ever self-composing synthesizer, which Mothersbaugh purchased in 1996 and has vowed to restore.

Simian Mobile Disco

SMD's new album, Attack Decay Sustain Release, features a track entitled "Scott." The duo of James Ford and Jas Shaw interviewed by Pitchfork:

With "Scott," we were sort of aiming to do a nod to Raymond Scott, who we're massive fans of and we thought it maybe ... not to say it's as good as his stuff, but it sounded a little bit like that kind of, so that was it.

The atmospheric track in the iTunes Store.

Jeff Winner of RaymondScott.com applauds: "More ambitious than just sampling the real thing."

"like robots or something"

"im about 80% sure that that isnt the correct song... thanks for the effort though... it may have been like a dexter's lab thing though..."

Like. But not.

Pearl Zimney Warnow

Pearl Zimney married Harry Warnow (Raymond Scott) in 1935. She was an essential part of Scott's life in the mid-1930s when he first achieved fame and recognition as a musical enfante terrible. She was present during the brief lifespan of his legendary "powerhouse" Quintette (1937-39), and she accompanied Raymond and his Quints to Hollywood in 1938. She was there during his foray into big band leadership (1939), and when he formed his first commercial electronic lab (Manhattan Research, Inc.) in 1946, the same year he composed the score for the hit Broadway musical Lute Song.

Besides being smart, beautiful, and resourceful, Pearl was an audio engineer (mentored by Scott) who in the 1930s occasionally "manned" the console at Scott's Universal Recorders studios in Manhattan.

"It was very interesting," she later recalled. "I remember once the famous jazz trumpeter Bunny Berigan came up with this singer—I forget her name. The two of them were high as a kite. I didn’t know anything about drugs then. But they were loopy."

Pearl and Harry had two children, Carolyn and Stanley. Stan is currently at work on a documentary about his dad.

"You could never make eye contact with Raymond, at least in his early years," Pearl reflected in a May 2000 interview. "His ability to connect with people, to have a real open relationship, it just wasn’t there—with musicians, with me. Raymond was an original, and I guess you could say a genius, but that encompasses a lot of things. He was different and difficult, and withdrawn. He had some very strange feelings and ideas. Though I loved him, I really did."

Pearl was born on this date in 1910. (She passed away on April 28, 2001.) The above quotes are from an extended interview with Pearl that appears in the Raymond Scott Quintette CD Microphone Music.

Pearl and Harry divorced in 1950. Two years later, she married Larry Winters. Pearl spent the rest of her long, productive, and buoyant life in Mamaroneck, NY.

Retro typography

From the back cover of the mid-1950s LP This Time With Strings (Coral), by Raymond Scott and his Orchestra, which will be reissued next year on Basta:


This Time With Strings was a mid-1950s orchestral LP by Scott, containing 11 originals, some dating from his 1937-39 Quintette (e.g., "Powerhouse," "Toy Trumpet"), others from the 1940s and '50s. The arrangements are sweet (lots of strings!). While not as adventurous as Scott's quintets and electronica, the album will have particular appeal to exotica/lounge/smooth orchestral enthusiasts. Back in the late 1980s, Jim Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus), recording as Steroid Maximus, turned this LP's "Powerhouse" into piledriving techno-sludge on the album Gondwanaland.

We've just finished remastering the tapes; the package is currently being designed by Piet Schreuders. This Time With Strings's anticipated street date: Spring 2008.

Quartet San Francisco in NYC

The Quartet San Francisco, whose new CD (Whirled Chamber Music) contains seven Raymond Scott tunes, will perform in New York on Sunday, October 21. They've got an in-store at Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center at 2 pm, and a 7 pm concert at Christ & St. Stephen's Church (W. 69th St. between Broadway/Columbus). A busy tour schedule follows.

Update (06 DEC 07): Grammy nomination!

Ecto-sketch

Ectoplasm, the forthcoming first CD collection of recordings by Raymond Scott's 1948-49 Quintet, features cover art by the late Jim Flora. The work first publicly appeared in a 1951 issue of Mademoiselle magazine illustrating a story by Robert Lowry entitled "The Mammoth Molar." The origins of the art, however, can be traced farther back to Flora's early 1940s sketchbooks:

Does that mean the Ecto-cover actually depicts Kid Ory?

HT: Jeff Winner

The Cartoon Gene

AllAboutJazz.com reveals:

"Scientists working diligently in a laboratory somewhere recently discovered a DNA strand and have identified it as the Cartoon Gene. This revelation proves the visual link between animation and sound. What they found is that cartoons permanently imprint sounds on your brain, for instance the sound of a character sneaking up stairs is a quickly rising pizzicato violin. That is why exposure to the music of Raymond Scott, adapted for Warner Brothers, brings automatic memories to anyone over forty."

End of the Century

Today marks the 99th anniversary of the birth of Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow, in Brooklyn). Countdown begins to the centennial.

Photo taken in 1934 by Scott's lifelong friend Paul Gordon. At the time Harry, age 25, was an emerging composer ("Christmas Night in Harlem" was a big hit that year) as well as a hotshot session pianist in the CBS radio network orchestra conducted by his older brother, Mark Warnow. It was around this time that Harry changed his name to "Raymond Scott." He often told interviewers that he lifted the name out of the Manhattan phonebook, and that he liked the name because it was "crisp" and had "good rhythm." Apocryphal? Works for us.

Jeff Winner, who created and maintains RaymondScott.com and co-produced Manhattan Research, Inc., offers his birthday toast:

Much of my understanding of the 20th century came from Raymond Scott. Over the past decade I've studied his fascinating career and life in great detail; this gave me a greater awareness of the achievements of the past 100 years. The 1900s saw dramatic leaps of human advancement and technological invention. Scott was inspired by the optimistic spirit of this progress, and became a major player in both artistic and technical ways.

On September 9, 1908, Orville Wright made the first experimental flight to catch air for an hour. The following day, coincidentally, Raymond Scott was born. Scott's musical journey started as a kid with a player piano in his dad's music shop. In 1949 Scott wrote music that foresaw "the first experimental rocket express to the moon." Twenty years later, NASA did it. While aviators went from Kitty Hawk to the moon, Scott went from a player piano to synthesizers, sequencers, and homemade drum machines. They were both striving for a celebration on the planet Mars.

Happy birthday, Raymond, and thank you for the history lessons. I'm certain Earthlings will love your work even more in another 99 years. Especially if they're listening during a commute to the moon.

montage by EsoTek

Puff daddy

Last year, Steve Cloutier directed a short film, The Chimney, about a nicotine addict. It is NOT an anti-smoking jeremiad—it's a humorous take on a popular vice that millions of people find pleasurable. The film also involves bicycles—which have caused countless unnecessary deaths over the last century.

For his frantic soundtrack, Steve used the Raymond Scott Quintette's classic 1937 recording of "Powerhouse."

Steve dropped us a note: "I've just re-posted the movie because I was never satisfied with the quality of the original post. I was able to improve it a bit."

Neal Pollack on Raymond Scott

Writer and "alternadad" Neal Pollack on "Raymond Scott's Loony Tunes" at eMusic Spotlight:

"When you listen to Microphone Music, it's like Daffy Duck is burrowing a tunnel into your mind. Each song contains a perfectly calibrated mix of the whimsy and anarchy that forms the philosophical basis for every great cartoon since the genre's golden age. Scott's compositions are at once fantastical and very cool. The protagonist may be falling off a tall ladder or running from a dog at the moment, the songs say, but soon enough, he'll be taking a nice hot bath or shuffling off into the sunset in the company of a lady rabbit with long eyelashes and plenty of lipstick. The music is fun, trippy, and wholly original. Long may the six-piece Quintette reign."