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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.
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.
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
Warner Bros. has announced plans to produce new TV and theatrical cartoons featuring Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester & Tweety and their cohorts. WB apparently feels compelled to roust the company's legacy luminaries out of their gated retirement communities and foist them on unsuspecting hordes of Justin Bieber fans. Wanna bet the violence and mayhem will be less … violent? We can just imagine the PC Police getting their hands on old Tex Avery scripts and red-penciling certain strains of insensitive behavior.
Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," composed in 1937, discovered in 1932 cartoon. Thanks to Miguel Malla, tenor saxophonist of the Spanish band Racalmuto, for the archival alert.
CHICAGO, Aug. 27 - (AP) - Some day composers won't write music, and musicians won't play it — yet fans will enjoy it in never-before-heard perfection. The composer or artist will simply project it by brain waves — "thought transference," says Raymond Scott.
BRAIN WAVES
This man, who thinks in terms of electronics and music, thinks that is all quite possible. Scott said in an interview:
"Brains put out electrical waves. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some day it were possible to do away with lines in music, such as writing it out and playing the notes. You'll just be able to think it.
"Imagine fastening electrodes to your head, inviting some people to your home and then thinking your music. If you wanted 1000 violins you could have them – and if you wanted the bass fiddle to play piccolo parts, you could do that, too."
RECORDINGS, TOO
Scott says even recordings will carry, instead of musical sound, the brain waves of the composer. No arrangers, no rehearsals.
Scott is a New Yorker who has spent most of his adult life working on new developments in his two loves, music and electronics. He maintains a permanent electronics research laboratory in New York, while he composes music and directs his bands for radio shows and night club appearances. His musical theories have always been off-beat.
