Part 2: Full Circle

A couple of weeks ago, I reported that an engineer, David Brown, was developing a replica of Raymond Scott's sequencer invention, The Circle Machine. Mr. Brown reports progress:

I mounted the base plate on a panel along with the 16 lamp rheostats and three control jacks. I built a separate desktop wood enclosure with an external power supply. I removed three of the vanes and the counterbalance weights to lighten the armature. This was rather a fun project and my first using a stepper motor. I built it for fun since I thought it would be visually interesting. I didn't intend for this to be a precision sequencer nor a faithful recreation of the Raymond Scott Circle Machine. However I am pleased with the results as it works well to generate interesting sequences and is fun to watch.

New video & details: here

Full Circle

Retired Tektronix engineering executive David Brown is constructing a working replica of Raymond Scott's sequencer invention, The Circle Machine. “I thought it would be fun to build something with motors and lamps," Mr. Brown says. "The only information I have is the picture on the Raymond Scott site. I used a Hammond vibrato scanner base as the base for the Circle Machine and mounted it on a plate with 16 potentiometers around it. I only have 8 lamps installed but I have it playing an octave scale. I’m not sure how practical it is but it’s kind of fun to watch."

See & hear Brown's replica in action: here

What A Character

A few years ago David Garland, host of WNYC's SPINNING ON AIR, wrote to me:

I'm about a third of the way into Michael Chabon's [Pulitzer Prize winning novel], The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (published by Random House), and to my surprise Raymond Scott shows up as a character in the story. The novel is set in New York City, and at this point in the story it's 1940. They've just gone to a party for Salvador Dali:

"Most of the names were unfamiliar to Joe, but he did recognize Raymond Scott, a composer who had recently hit it big with a series of whimsical, cacophonous, breakneck pseudo-jazz pop tunes. Just the other day, when Joe stopped at Hippodrome Radio, they had been playing his new record, 'Yesterthoughts,' over the store PA. Scott was feeding a steady diet of Louis Armstrong platters to the portable RCA while explaining what he had meant when he referred to Satchmo as, 'the Einstein of the blues.' As the notes fluttered out of the fabric-covered loudspeaker, he would point at them, as if to illustrate what he was saying, and even tried to snatch at one with his hands. He kept turning the volume up, the better to compete with the less important conversations taking place around him."

A few pages later, Dali, who was wearing an old-fashioned diving suit, begins to suffocate, and Raymond Scott tries to remove Dali's metal helmet. In that scene, when someone suggests they remove Dali's helmet, Scott shouts, "What the f*ck do you think I'm trying to do?!" That seems uncharacteristic to me, but what the f*ck do I know about how much d*mn cursing Raymond did? So far, I'm enjoying the book a lot.
—David Garland

Another email I received today:

Hi: I am a librarian in San Bruno, CA and I have a patron who is trying to find the sound/music for something he thinks Raymond Scott wrote. Michael Chabon, in his "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," writes, "The doorbell played its weird tune, Raymond Scott's shortest composition, 'Fanfare for the Fuller Brush Man.'" Does such a composition exist and if yes, can I get the sheet music or do you know where the patron could hear it?
 Thank you in advance.

Although Scott released a tune titled "Yesterthoughts" in 1940, the events depicted in this novel, as well as the composition "Fanfare for the Fuller Brush Man," are creations from Chabon's imagination. Scott did, however, invent an electronic musical doorbell.

• Order the book from: Amazon

Don't Knock The Rock

The new Raymond Scott documentary, DECONSTRUCTING DAD, will be screened on August 5 at the DON’T KNOCK THE ROCK film & music festival in Los Angeles. The fest was founded by director Allison Anders (Sex and the City), produced in association with Cinefamily, and the venue is the historic Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax Ave.

The screening will be followed by historian/author Jerry Beck's "Secret Animated History of Raymond Scott," a chronicle of Scott's work as adapted in Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Animaniacs, and The Simpsons.

Deconstructing Dad's director, Stan Warnow, will attend, Raymond Scott's widow, Mitzi also plans to be there, and guitarist Skip Heller will spin Scott tunes before and after the show. 


P.S. From the new issue of: the LA WEEKLY.

Manchester Jazz Festival

Glasgow-based drummer Stu Brown formed his sextet in 2008 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Raymond Scott’s birth, and the group has performed to sell-out crowds across the UK. Each of their shows opens with a specially-commissioned eight minute film by Scott’s son, Stan Warnow, featuring material from his new documentary DECONSTRUCTING DAD: The Music, Machines, & Mystery of Raymond Scott. As the film ends, Scott’s original recording fades and The Stu Brown Sextet takes over. The second half of the concert brings the music further forward with new arrangements and compositions by the band which explore the ground-breaking electronic aspects to Scott’s music-making. Details & tickets for this Manchester Jazz Festival performance: here

Date:   Thursday, July 29, 2010

Time:   7:30pm - 10:00pm

Location:   Royal Northern College of Music

Street:   124 Oxford Rd

City:   Manchester, United Kingdom

"Half the triumph is the way the Brown's sextet brings Scott's carefully written notes off the page with such zest and spontaneity -- the other half is that it’s just so damned enjoyable." —Rob Adams, JAZZWISE

Happy Birthday, Mitzi Scott

Everything's fine, two years later. Happy 92nd, to the beautiful Mrs. Scott.

another Facebook page

There's a Facebook page devoted to Raymond Scott, but we didn't create it (and won't link to it). We don't know who did, and all attempts to contact the admin have met with stony silence. Whoever launched it posted one lame status update in 2008 and nothing since. So we created the OFFICIAL Raymond Scott Archives page on Facebook. At some point ours will have more members than the bogus group and we'll be de facto rulers the internets. If you join our RS FB group now, in the future you will be allowed to continue using the web. Everyone else will be blocked by a China-sized firewall.

The Reel Thing

Irwin Chusid was quick with his camera when he captured this exciting moment during a research mission at the Marr Sound Archives in Kansas City. Peering through metal shelving in the stacks, Gert-Jan Blom (right) and I are thrilled to discover this Raymond Scott tape reel with the famous Motown logo:

The engineer ID'ed as "CLH" is Cal Harris, whose credits include The Beach Boys ("Good Vibrations" in 1966 at Gold Star studios), Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and The Commodores.

XII Festival Cinema Jueu Barcelona

The new Raymond Scott documentary, DECONSTRUCTING DAD, will premiere in Spain on July 8th at the Barcelona Jewish Film Festival. Director Stan Warnow will attend and conduct a Q&A following the screening.

On Saturday night, July 10th, the band Racalmuto, who have developed an extensive Raymond Scott repertoire, will perform at the festival.

Glasgow Jazz Festival

The Glasgow Jazz Festival presents: THE STU BROWN SEXTET PLAY RAYMOND SCOTT. Musical mayhem is brought to life by Stu Brown’s brilliantly orchestrated Sextet who will perform Raymond Scott’s cartoon compositions in sync with animation created by the children at this year's Flutter Echo workshop. The concert will also feature new arrangements of Scott's music commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council.

• TICKETS: Here
• WHEN: Sunday, June 27th, 2010, 2pm
• WHERE: Platform@The Bridge
, 1000 Westerhouse Road, Easterhouse, Glasgow

Update: review from Scotland's The Big Issue here:

Thanks to these fresh arrangements, the contemporary value of Scott’s work, so far ahead of its time, is plain. The slinking bassy throb of ‘Snake Woman’ wouldn’t be out of place on a Tom Waits record, while the timings, especially of the drums, on some of the Electronium sessions that have been reinterpreted by Stu and his merry men are something you might hear on a Roni Size track. The work Stu Brown is doing here is genuinely impressive, and if the starker new arrangements of Scott’s bold/odd Electronium works premiered today hook the more serious jazz aficionados, then fairweather listeners can remain happy with the kickabout cartoon capers of that first album.

2010 Gold Medal Winner

DECONSTRUCTING DAD, the new Raymond Scott documentary, has been awarded the 2010 Park City Film Music Festival "Director's Choice Gold Medal for Excellence," in their Music Documentaries category. Congratulations to director Stan Warnow.

Warner Bros. cartoon scores

Raymond Scott's melodies permeate countless scores of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Scott never worked for WB; a dozen of his compositions were adapted dozens of times by WB music director Carl Stalling (at right), who also composed the majority of the original music heard in the classic cartoons. Over the years, we're often asked about the availability of original WB cartoon scores, and we've never had a satisfactory answer to provide. However, we recently received the following news from a visitor to RaymondScott.com:

I'm writing from Laramie, Wyoming, USA - not sure if you'd be interested, but the American Heritage Center in Laramie is home to a large volume of lost/disorganized Warner Brother/Looney Tunes original arrangements and drafts. The history of the music is that it was given to the Heritage Center in unlabeled, mixed-up boxes. Dr. Anne Guzzo has been sorting and cataloging the music - sorta like a gigantic puzzle. Hardly anyone other than Dr. Guzzo has really utilized the collection (other than an occasional piece by the local University).

We're passing along this info and a link to the Carl W. Stalling Papers at AHC/Laramie. If you have any additional information or discoveries to share, please drop us a note.

New Hope Film Festival

The new Raymond Scott documentary, DECONSTRUCTING DAD, will be presented at the New Hope Film Festival on June 23rd, and director Stan Warnow will attend. Tickets: here

Hang On To Your Lego

Featuring actors & props rendered in LEGO®, this short animated music video film, A Grand and Merry Race, won first prize at the Brickfest Animation Festival. The soundtrack contains passages from Raymond Scott's classic "Powerhouse." Watch it: here