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

She's A Doll!

Volume 3 of Raymond Scott's groundbreaking ambient electronic album series, SOOTHING SOUNDS FOR BABY, features a track titled "Little Miss Echo." In 1962, about a year before the series was released, a high-tech doll of the same name was introduced by the American Character Doll Company. Built into the Little Miss's chest was a miniature battery-powered tape machine controlled by a knob styled to look like a bow; the device would repeat up to 25 seconds of speech.

Scott had two young daughters at the time, and I speculated they might have owned the doll, but they don't recall it. Considering his lifelong fixation with all aspects of sound recording, it's likely Scott was intrigued by the novelty toy. Perhaps he was inspired by this creepy TV commercial, or maybe it was just a coincidence. At any rate, Raymond would be shocked to know he himself is now a doll.

Shhh... John Cage & Raymond Scott

More than a dozen Raymond Scott tunes were immortalized in Bugs Bunny classics, but there's one Scott composition that was never heard in cartoons. In fact, it was never heard.

"The antics of a 13-piece orchestra made audiences fidget and giggle," TIME magazine reported more than a decade before the premiere of John Cage's famous silent composition, 4'33". "The band was going through all the motions: the swart, longish-haired leader led away; the brasses, the saxophones, the clarinets made a great show of fingering and blowing. This, explained leader Raymond Scott, was silent music."

Scott's 1941 audience didn't appreciate the stunt, however. According to Cage, his 1952 presentation also fell on deaf ears: "They missed the point. There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds."

Raymond conducted other sensory deprivation experiments during this period. The same TIME article claimed he had learned to drive a car with his eyes closed, and that he could "take one look at a parking space, back into it without taking another; memorize a turn the first time, drive it shut-eyed thereafter. Raymond Scott still drives his band open-eyed — with results which, when audible, sound neat and crisp."

Sadly, few recordings of Scott's "Silent Music" survive, and it remains unreleased to this day. However, to any musician brave enough to attempt it we will provide charts.

Raymond Scott 101: Happy Birthday

Today is the 101st anniversary of Raymond Scott's birth. But before we eat cake & ice cream, let's review some basics for the kids who were late to class.

Q: When was Raymond Scott born?

A: On September 10, 1908.

Q: Is Raymond Scott still alive?

A: He passed away in 1994 at the age of 85.

Q: Did Raymond Scott write music for cartoons?

A: No, but 20 of his compositions have been immortalized in countless classic animations, from BUGS BUNNY to THE SIMPSONS.

Q: Did BOB MOOG, the inventor of Moog Synthesizers, work for Raymond Scott?

A: Although Bob Moog was more than 25 years younger than Raymond, they were professional colleagues & friends for nearly two decades. Bob acknowledged Ray as an early influence during the 1950s & '60s. Details about Scott-Moog connections here.

Q: Was Johnny Williams, drummer for the 1930s Raymond Scott Quintette, related to JOHN WILLIAMS, the famous film score composer of music for JAWS, STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, HARRY POTTER, etc.?

A: Yes, they are father & son.

Q: Did Raymond Scott work for MOTOWN?

A: During the 1950s & '60s, Scott perfected his 'Electronium,' an electronic music machine which attracted the attention of Motown owner Berry Gordy, who purchased an Electronium for Motown in September 1970. Scott then became Motown's Director of Electronic Research and Development for several years. Following a serious heart attack in 1977, Scott retired from Motown at age 69.

Q: I've heard that Raymond Scott worked with MUPPETS creator JIM HENSON. Fact or fiction?

A: Henson was more than a quarter-century younger than Scott when they met in the mid-1960s, and they collaborated on experimental art films, industrial reels, and TV projects. Many of the Scott-Henson collaborations are showcased in the 2-CD/144-page book package MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC.

HOMEWORK & FURTHER STUDY:

• Raymond Scott Timeline

• Raymond Scott FAQ

• RaymondScott.com

OK, now it's time for the birthday party!

PART FOUR: The Case of the Multiple Raymond Scotts

Raymond Scott had a wild imagination, yet the man born Harry Warnow chose a banal pseudonym. A Google search pinpoints plenty of Raymond Scotts who are not our Raymond Scott. Part four of a diversionary series (part 1, part 2, and part 3):

Raymond Scott: REBELLIOUS COUNTRY STAR

I learned of this Raymond Scott thru an email query to RaymondScott.com:

From: Georgia B.

Date: September 22, 2008 2:43:49 PM EDT

To: Jeff Winner

Subject: Young Ray Scott

Is the country singer, Ray Scott, that is

so popular now, Raymond Scott's son? They

don't have the same voice. I love the young

Ray Scott's bassy voice! And I love his music!!

Just curious,

Georgia B.

I explained to Georgia that there is no known blood relation. Yet the manifesto on young Scott's site reveals some striking similarities in musical philosophies: "I'm taking the bull by the horns and doing it my way, callin' the shots, and putting out an album on my own. This stuff is real, it's raw, and it's 100 percent Ray. I'm calling the project 'CRAZY LIKE ME,' I think you'll agree that's a pretty fitting title. The tattoo on my left arm says 'Create the Path,' damn right! The time has never been better in the music biz to do something different - independent of these narrow-minded, chicken-shit, so called behemoth record companies."

Our Raymond Scott didn't have tattoos and was not known to use colorful language like "damn right" or "chicken-shit," but he was often accused of being crazy. The two also share a penchant for descriptive titles. Examples from country Scott's albums include "Do It With The Lights On," "Ashtray On A Motorcycle," "Rats Don't Race," and "Sometimes The Bottle Hits You Back." Damn right, indeed. Check this video for "Hell Got Raised."

tek saport

Lies!

ALL LIES!!

Status: The third memo, which said that the second memo — the one that said to disregard the first memo — was erroneous and should be disregarded, reinstates the first memo and all executive and administrative directives therein, pending further memos. Conflicting bureaucratic logistics -- we haz dem!

Hair-Raising Discovery

It's been long established (since the mid-1930s, in fact) that Raymond Scott was an innovative composer and musician, but less known is his pioneering role in establishing trendy hairstyles. Case in point -- this photographic evidence proves Scott invented the faux-hawk ca. 1950s.

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

Raymond Scott on myspace

I hate myspace. So do you. So do millions of people who use it. I don't use it—I just hate it. Don't send me your myspace link. Thanks. There is a Raymond Scott page on myspace, and it serves many good purposes. It can be updated faster and easier than the Scott website, and it catches the attention of—well, of people who use myspace. Which I don't, because I hate it. Remember? I won't remind you again. Promise. You can find information at the RS myspace page you won't find here or at RaymondScott.com. So can your mother. So can Raymond's—and everybody's—friend Tom. The Raymond Scott page is probably the coolest one in all of myspace, and the only one you need to know. All the rest are bogus. The Scott page was created by Jeff Winner, the same good buddy who operates RaymondScott.com. Nota bene from Jeff: "On the page, I try to make clear it's NOT actually RS doing the page, because lots of people assumed that was the case when it first launched." People, Raymond Scott died in 1994. That's several years before the internet was even invented! Speaking of obituaries, did you know Scott composed "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm"? Neither did we! You won't find that here, at the Scott website, in his Wiki entry, or on his myspace page. The web is just FULL of fascinating information—some of it true!