Artifacts from the Archives

We are offering a FREE 349-page pdf compendium of Raymond Scott artifacts and ephemera, including previously uncirculated historic material. The contents of Artifacts from the Archives are intended as informational supplements to the Scott albums Three Willow Park, Manhattan Research Inc., and Soothing Sounds for Baby.

The chronological, annotated documents and images spotlight Scott’s career in the field of electronic music, from his 1920s Brooklyn high school days to his 1980s post-Motown years in Los Angeles. Much of the content focuses on Scott’s most productive period, from 1958 (when he began working on electronic music full-time) to 1972 (his first year at Motown). The collection features Scott’s handwritten and typed technical notes, photographs, sketches, correspondence, art, schematics, patents, circuit diagrams, vintage news articles, and family ephemera. The pdf is offered for download in two formats: high resolution (for viewing and printing), and reduced resolution, suitable for paging through on-screen.

F*ck Art (Let's Dance)

Our friend Sally Eckhoff, a former contributor to the Village Voice, has a new book called F*ck Art (Let's Dance), a memoir about her days living in New York's East Village. A writer for the Paris Review called it, "A Sentimental Education reimagined by The Cramps." Sally tells us there's a Raymond Scott angle, and we invited her to inform our readers. She wrote:

One of the characters is a real-life Oliver Sacks-type genius and piano virtuoso who discovers Raymond Scott in the 1970s, when people with that kind of mind were generally ignored or misunderstood. The guy thought he hit the lottery. Here's a quote about watching him learn to play "Powerhouse: "The songs starts with a grumpy, mechanized rhythm, like someone stomping downstairs, and later fires up into a madly-escalating riff that has unfinished phrases flying out of the horn section like parts off an assembly line."

If you want to read something about the East Village that's not full of famous cranky people in black clothes and their famous cranky friends, check out my book. It's brand-new, in paperback and eBook from Water Street Press, and you can get it on Amazon, iTunes, and all the usual places.

The Book of Drugs

Mike Doughty, a prolific multi-tasker who issued 2 new albums in recent months, has published his compelling memoir, THE BOOK OF DRUGS. As the press-release states, it features "cameos by Redman, Ani DiFranco, the late Jeff Buckley, and others." The book also mentions the Raymond Scott sample loops that Doughty memorably incorporated to great effect into 3 songs with his 1990s band, Soul Coughing. Excerpts, detailing tensions with his former bandmate:

• • • • •

"There's two ways to play the sampler," the sampler player said, "as a conventional keyboard, or to trigger sound effects." I hoped I could convince him otherwise.

I brought some CDs over to his house. There were a bunch of sounds I wanted him to use: Howlin' Wolf, the Andrew Sisters, Toots and the Maytals, The Roches, Raymond Scott, Grand Puba, a cast recording of Guys and Dolls.

His house was so organized, it made me feel weird. He had a master's degree in composition from an uptown conservatory and was well inculcated in the conservatory mind-set — he called rock drummers "percussionists" and used terms like sforzando when discussing how to best approach a rhythm that I'd ripped off from Funkdoobiest. ...

The repetitions of dance music were foreign to him. "You mean, you want me to play this over and over again?" he asked in rehearsal.

"Yo, G," said the drummer, "just hold down that there key with some duct tape."

He was too proud for the duct-tape maneuver, but he became OK with the repetition. ...

There's another interview out there that I can't find: the interviewer mentions the Howlin' Wolf sample, Andrew Sisters sample, the Raymond Scott sample, and he asks the sampler player what makes for a great sample. The sampler player answers at length, and quite pedantically, about how he selects and manipulates them. But wait — though certainly the guy's fantastic at what he does, no question — the interviewer guy's talking about samples that I came up with.

• • • • •

Hear & See:"All Around The Christmas Tree"

Raymond Scott's first hit was "Christmas Night In Harlem," written in 1934 at age 25. His second holiday tune, "All Around The Christmas Tree," released on Columbia Records, accompanied this special illustrated songbook section of the December 1940 issue of Coronet magazine. The label credits the performance to Scott's "New Orchestra," with vocalist Clyde Burke. Listen to this rare song here, and click the images below for full-sized views to read the intro and sing along with the lyrics:

Leonard Maltin's new DVD review

LEONARD MALTIN, one of the world's most recognized and respected film critics and historians, writes:

"Admirers of the music of Raymond Scott, which infused so many Warner Bros. cartoons and has gathered a loyal following in recent years, should know that his son’s absorbing, highly personal documentary about the multifaceted musician, DECONSTRUCTING DAD, is now available online at ScottDoc.com. It’s well worth checking out."

Previously, Mr. Maltin said the film was:

"A fascinating look at a musical genius and the way he lived his life. Stan Warnow allows us to share his journey of discovery as he pieces together the story of his father. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

New LOONEY TUNES Songbook

The new LOONEY TUNES SONGBOOK features 5 Raymond Scott classics:

• "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals"
• "In an 18th Century Drawing Room"
• "Powerhouse"
• "Reckless Night on Board an Ocean Liner"
• "The Toy Trumpet"

Order from: Amazon.com

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

Les Paul & Raymond Scott

Raymond Scott's fellow/rival musician, inventor, and multi-track recording pioneer Les Paul died today at age 94. Details about this audio giant and his important accomplishments here.

Below is an excerpt from THE WORLD OF SOUND, a chapter I contributed to the SOUND/UNBOUND anthology, compiled by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky:

In 1952, Raymond Scott designed and built two of the world’s first multi-track tape machines, capable of recording seven and fourteen parallel tracks on a single reel. Two years later, sonic maverick Les Paul made an eight-track prototype, and inventor Hugh Le Caine devised a way to mix-down six separate tape sources in 1955. But as author/music historian Thom Holmes points out, “nobody came close to matching Scott’s early achievement.” Scott filed two patents for his advancements in magnetic tape technology in 1953, and a third in ’59.

Neil Strauss included a chapter about Raymond Scott in his new book, EVERYONE LOVES YOU WHEN YOU’RE DEAD, and added this footnote:

"During an interview with Les Paul, the musician who helped develop the electric guitar and popularize multi-track recording, I mentioned Raymond Scott and accidentally set him off on a tirade. Evidently, the two were rival innovators. 'He used to come to my house,' Paul snapped. 'He sure had some equipment though. I envied him.'" 

Dancing Machine

Excerpts from THE WORLD OF SOUND, a chapter I (Jeff Winner) contributed to the SOUND/UNBOUND anthology, compiled by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky:

In August of 1970, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy read an article in Variety magazine about Raymond Scott and his Electronium. Along with The Beatles and The Beach Boys, Motown virtually controlled the 1960s pop charts with stars like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross & The Supremes. And with THE JACKSON 5 as his latest smash supergroup, Gordy was at the height of his influence. ... 

Hoby Cook was a technician at Motown’s MoWest facility who tested Scott’s Electronium extensively. “I wanted some reactions, so as an experiment, I’d open the door and turn the volume up — loud.” Cook’s technique worked. Motown personnel heard the curious sounds and wandered in. “Cal Harris did a lot of recording with it, and MICHAEL JACKSON was fascinated,” Cook recalled. “He was just this kid sitting there, staring at the flashing lights. He said he wanted THE JACKSON 5 to use the Electronium somehow.”

Seclusionist

In Andrew Fielding's new book, THE LUCKY STRIKE PAPERS, the author recounts his 1979 interview with Raymond Scott: "I'm so much of a secluded operator — a seclusionist, I guess," said Scott, continuing: 

One of the funniest things that ever happened to me was — the very first time I went on the road with a dance band. I wasn't the type to go out to the city's nightclubs and meet with other bandleaders in town and get together where they would hang out. I never did that. I wasn't inclined that way. And one of the reports I got back from Jerry Colonna, who used to be a good friend of mine, I had worked with him at CBS. He said, "You know what I heard about you? I heard people say, 'Who the hell does he think he is, the male Greta Garbo?'"

Routining

Over the years, Raymond Scott has been jeered by jazz purists because as a bandleader he didn't permit improvisation. Actually, original RS Quintette saxophonist Dave Harris (1913-2002) told Storyville magazine's Ben Kragting, Jr., in a 1993 interview: "Although Scott did the composing and arranging, he never suggested what to play on the jazz. That was up to you. But what you did was fit the jazz within the character of the tune." In a phone conversation with me around that time, Mr. Harris added that once you created a solo that Scott liked, he insisted that it stay that way, thus becoming an intrinsic part of the composition. In this sense, Scott's works are more through-composed than most of what qualifies as "jazz." Listening to countless takes (and re-takes, ad infinitum--Scott liked to rehearse!) in the archives, I can attest that many solos evolve and become set, although few are note-perfect identical (a superhuman feat).

This approach could be considered an extreme form of "routining," best explained by Richard M. Sudhalter in Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1999). This talmudic brick of a book has generated its share of controversy. Nonetheless, Sudhalter is a rare musician who is also a fine writer, storyteller, historian, and musicologist, so his views are worth sharing:

"Routining" [is] working a solo to a high point of development, then presenting it more or less the same way each time. ...

Jazz listeners--fans, critics, historians--seem always to have resisted accepting, even understanding, such practices. From earliest days, the romanticized view of hot music has demanded that a solo be wholly extemporaneous, creation of a given moment's circumstance and stimuli. For many, the thought of a player working on a chorus over time, shaping and buffing it, then performing it like a theatrical set-piece, each time with the enthusiasm of first creation, seems profoundly disturbing. Some have been inclined to view musicians who practice such methods as not genuine, their creations at best a simulation of "the real thing."

The attitude differs little in kind or effect from the Rousseau-esque ("noble savage") primitivism once prevalent among fans and canonists of early New Orleans music; any musician who had studied his instrument, it seemed to say, or knew harmony, or could even read music was somehow contaminated, less authentic than his unlearned colleagues.

"Routining" came about for reasons intrinsic to the mechanics of professional music-making. Having to play nightly, sometimes repeating the same number, in the same arrangement, several times in an evening, can quickly sap inspiration. If the player is a featured attraction or bandleader, it becomes all the more necessary to deliver, each time, an inspired and convincing performance, easily recognizable as his work. The result, inevitably, is a distillation, gradual creation of a generic solo which, when completed, contains the player's essence.

Recording exacerbates the process. The need, in a studio, to deliver a quality performance for the microphone, the chance that any one of a number of "takes" will be chosen for issue, exerts pressure to have something ready--even though that something may not, strictly speaking, be improvised on the spot. Once in place, it is subject to infinite variation; but the shape and structure remain. If the player is feeling especially inspired he will take liberties; if not, he can still deliver the "routined" solo with appropriate elan and pass muster.

Neither false nor dishonest, this is an expedient, born of the conditions under which hot musicians of the '20s and '30s had to work. Multiple takes from famous record sessions, some issued years after the event, reveal that [Bix] Beiderbecke, [Frank] Trumbauer, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Adrian Rollini, Jack Teagarden, Harry Carney, and Bunny Berigan were among many others who worked oft-featured choruses into fixed shape and kept them there.

In the words of British trumpeter-commentator Humphrey Lyttelton:

The creation of jazz is a more mysterious process than the mere pouring out of spontaneous ideas. The requirements of "improvisation" can be satisfied, in jazz terms, if an identical sequence of notes is played with the subtlest alteration in rhythmic emphasis, the slightest change in the use of dynamics or vibrato, the almost imperceptible raising or lowering of the emotional temperature. Likewise, "originality" in jazz lies not only in the pattern of notes that is produced, but also in the instrumental tone or "voice" in which it is uttered