Growing up with Raymond Scott

Raymond Scott fan Christine Lorraine writes:

I wanted to take a moment to express something — in the mid-1990s you gave me a Raymond Scott CD (Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights) when my son and daughter were babies. Now they are grown up. Nicole plays sax, and Nicholas plays French horn, drums, cello, and anything else he touches. Nicholas (who also plays drums with my band) recently hopped in the car when I picked him up from work, opened the console, and immediately inserted the Raymond Scott CD into the player. He listened to his favorites since childhood: "Manhattan Minuet," "Tobacco Auctioneer," and "At an Arabian House Party." He can point out where the clarinet squeaks in "Powerhouse" and how the trombones are intentionally dissonant in "House Party." My daughter Nicole does the same thing with the same CD, and she said it has struck her since early childhood that music could ever sound like that.
This is a roundabout way of saying thanks for playing such an indirect yet profound influence on their musical development. Raymond Scott's music is such a treasured part of our lives. 

Nicholas (above) had been listening to Raymond Scott since age 3 and wanted to play drums. Being a musician mom, well, it was no holds barred.

Ages 8 and 10 (above) they performed together playing "Jingle Bells" in the school talent show. She doesn't play sax so much now, but fronts an all-original punk group and writes their lyrics. I wish there were a way to expose more young children to intricate music like Raymond Scott's. I did so experimentally, but what an amazing outcome. 

75 Years of Reckless Nights

On this date, 75 years ago, Raymond Scott returned to CBS studios with his Quintette for their second session to record "Reckless Night On Board An Ocean Liner." The tune was a hit when it was released in 1937, and is immortalized in the classic LOONEY TUNES, "Jumpin' Jupiter," "Hare Lift," and "Mouse Warming." It also serves as the soundtrack for this strange YouTube video by Silent Banana Theatre. ("Note: this film contains banana nudity and references to ambiguous fruit sexuality.") Download the vintage Columbia recording from the iTunes store, or Amazon — and see details about our year-long celebration of the 75th Anniversary here.

Playlist: Elf Power, The Killers, Ted Hawkins, Cat Power, and ...

I've been sucked DeeperIntoMusic 24/7 since discovering the DJ-free web station a few weeks ago. I buy every third track in the iTunes store because DIM has excellent taste and serves a feasty gumbo of popular and obscure rock, covering five decades. (Motto: "Music that doesn't suck ... from the 60s-70s-80s-90s and today." Other than a bit too much Paul Simon, believe it.)

Understand -- the "music" you're getting "deeper into" is narrowly defined. DIM doesn't program jazz, the only country is "alt," and forget experimental, world, show tunes, 78s, vintage R&B, or hardcore anything.

But tonight, following the strains of Neil Young, out of nowhere came this (click to enlarge screen grab):

Whirled Chamber Music

Jazz violinist Jeremy Cohen, leader of the Quartet San Francisco, whose forthcoming album, Whirled Chamber Music, contains seven classic Raymond Scott compositions:

"I was introduced to Raymond Scott by a stagehand pushing a broom. It was 1995, at the Theatre on the Square in San Francisco (now the Post Street Theatre), and I was lead violinist for a 22-month run of Forever Tango. The stagehand was Peter Palermo, now director of the Hettenhausen Center for the Arts in Lebanon, IL. Peter brought me a Scott CD called Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights. It set off in me a Raymond Scott fever that still burns! Now, as 2008 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of Raymond Scott’s birth, we have dedicated a large portion of Whirled to this brilliant composer, inventor, bandleader, and pioneer of electronic music."

Samples of Whirled can be heard here.

Over the next few months, the QSF will perform in Los Angeles, Columbus, Pasadena, Louisville, NJ, NYC, Berkeley, Natick, and elsewhere.

Whirled's cover art may not look familiar, but it features details of an uncirculated mid-1960s painting by LP cover illustration icon Jim Flora.

Update (06 DEC 07): Grammy nomination!

In 1993, MTV used to care ...

... about such things:

Not that they made a big deal about it—forty-five seconds or so on MTV News. The hook wasn't Scott's legacy or musical appeal, but the fact that his vintage recordings were being used in the recently launched Ren & Stimpy Show.