Arnold Eidus (1922-2013)

Raymond Scott and Arnold Eidus, 1950

With sadness we note the passing on June 3 of world-renowned violinist Arnold Eidus, at age 90. With pride we note his Raymond Scott connection: in 1950 Eidus performed in a duet setting at Carnegie Hall the only 20th century public recital of Scott's Suite for Violin and Piano. The five-movement Suite was Scott's only known "serious," classical composition, and we've heard anecdotal accounts that it was composed specifically as a showcase for Mr. Eidus. Though he was only 27 at the time, it was not the first time Eidus had appeared at Carnegie Hall—he had performed there as soloist on Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole at age thirteen!

A rehearsal recording of the Suite was discovered in the Scott collection at the Marr Sound Archives, and was released last year on Basta, coupled with a 21st century recording by Davide Rossi and Ramon Dor.

While researching liner notes for the CD, I interviewed Eidus by phone at his Boca Raton home on August 24, 2011. He was a gracious man, and while he could not recall recording or performing the Suite ("I've done thousands of sessions over the years"), he did remember Scott—fondly. "I got along well with him, never had a problem," Mr. Eidus recounted. "I had a pleasant time with him." Unlike a number of musicians who worked in the 1940s and '50s under the demanding bandleader, Eidus said, "I can't say anything bad about him." (Not that we were asking.) The 1950 disc did not indicate the identity of the pianist, but subsequent research revealed it was Carlo Bussotti, who had accompanied Eidus at the 1950 Carnegie concert.

Eidus enjoyed a storied career as a studio accompanist in the jazz, classical, pop, and Latin fields. His session logs include dates for Sinatra, Perez Prado, Wes Montgomery, Lena Horne, Cal Tjader, Doris Day, Freddie Hubbard, and hundreds more. Among his other professional pursuits, Eidus facilitated the hiring of musicians for various projects. When Scott was named conductor on TV's Your Hit Parade in 1950, he needed a string section. Eidus contracted a half-dozen players, and landed a violin chair in the YHP orchestra himself for a year or two. He also recalled touring briefly with Scott, and launched his own classical record label, Stradivari Records, in the 1950s. A busy man, now eternally at rest. Condolences to his family.

BOB MOOG's memories of his friend and colleague Raymond Scott

Although the late Bob Moog was more than 25 years younger than Raymond Scott, they were professional colleagues, and friends. Here, in his own words, are Bob's memories of Raymond:

In the mid-1950s, I was in my early twenties, living with my parents, and attending Columbia University. In the evenings my father and I would make theremins as something between a hobby and a business. One day we got a call from Raymond Scott, who we knew from radio and television. He invited us to come out and see his place in North Hills, on Long Island, New York. We shot up Northern Boulevard and eventually we got there. It was a beautiful, big, four-story mansion surrounded by elegant grounds. Raymond greeted us and showed us in. First, he showed us his recording studio. Then a very large room with a cutting lathe, and all sorts of monitoring and mixing equipment on the main floor of the house. I remember the amplifiers that drove the cutting head of this disc lathe were behind a screen, and they were big, fat vacuum tubes that would glow yellow like the sun at sunset. Next he took us downstairs and showed us around. There was an elevator going from one floor to the other. The entire downstairs of the house was a dream workshop. It consisted of several rooms. A large room with nothing in it but machine tools of the highest quality. Everything you could want. There were four or five lathes, drill presses, milling machines, and on, and on. The next room was a wood-working shop. Once again, completely equipped. Next was an electronics assembly room, and off that there was a large, thoroughly equipped stockroom of all kinds of electronic parts. So there my father and I were with our mouths hanging open! It looked like heaven to me. My father was an electrical engineer who worked for Consolidated Edison, and I was a twenty year-old electronics nerd who found himself on the track to becoming an engineer... ''It was the size of a football field! More than half a dozen big rooms, impeccably set-up. The floors were painted like a high class industrial laboratory. He had a whole room of metal-working equipment, a room full of wood-working equipment, and this huge barn of a room for electronics.'' —BOB MOOG Raymond then brought us into the big room downstairs where he had music synthesis equipment. He had rack upon rack of stepping relays that were used by the telephone company. The relay would step through all positions when dialed. He had them hooked up to turn sounds on and off. It was a huge, electro-mechanical sequencer! And he had it programmed to produce all sorts of rhythmic patterns. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. First, we heard all these funny sounds coming from all over the place — 'beep-beep, boomp, bop-bop' — and then 'click-click-click-click-click' on top of that — dozens and hundreds of things going 'click-click-click.' We were standing right in the middle of it. It was disorienting. I'd never seen anything like it! Never tried to imagine anything like it. And I'm sure it gave me something to think about over the years. Raymond also showed us his "Circle Machine," which was a big disc, and a rotating arm with a photo-cell at the end of the arm. There was a series of lights on the circumference of the disc that this arm would pass over, and you could adjust the brightness of each lightbulb. As the arm swung around, and the photocell was illuminated and got darker, the different sounds would come on and off. Obviously, not everybody could do these things. It required a huge amount of imagination, a huge amount of money, and an impressive amount of craziness too! ''Raymond Scott bought a theremin from me in the early 1950s. A couple of months later, he invited us to see his prototype of a keyboard instrument. This was NOT a theremin anymore. Raymond quickly realized there were more elegant ways of controlling an electronic circuit.'' —BOB MOOG The evening ended by Raymond placing an order for a theremin with us. But he wouldn't tell us what it was for. Many months later, we delivered the theremin. Several months after we delivered, he calls again and asks us to come and see how he had used our theremin. Once again we got in the car and headed eastward on Northern Boulevard. Off in one corner of his electronics workshop was our theremin that we had sold to him, with the pitch antenna cut off! In place of the pitch antenna there were wires going off to an assembly of parts in the back of a keyboard. Raymond called this his "Clavivox." This was not a theremin anymore — Raymond quickly realized there were more elegant ways of controlling an electronic circuit. He used a very steady source of light instead of a theremin for subsequent models. There was a shutter consisting of photographic film that got progressively lighter as it went up. This produced a voltage which then changed the pitch of the tone generator. Raymond had everything adjusted so that, sure enough, when you played the keyboard you got the notes of the scale. But the really neat thing, as he pointed out, was that now you could glide from note to note — you could play expressively — you didn't have to play discrete notes. The waveform of the sound determines the tone-color, and there are several different ways of changing the waveform that are characteristic of, but not identical to analog synthesizer. Much of the sound producing circuitry of the Clavivox resembles very closely the first analog synthesizer my company made in the mid-'60s. Some of the sounds are not the same sounds that you can get with an analog synthesizer, but they're close. The Clavivox also generated a vibrating voltage, or "vibrato," which can be turned on and off from the left-hand control. There are three controls under the finger of your left to produce a fast attack, a slow attack, or a silence between notes. There's a lever you can press to extinguish a note so you can go very fast on and off. Although it has a three octave keyboard, there's a range switch on the front panel so you can play very low to very high. The Clavivox looks sort of like a synthesizer too; it has a three-octave keyboard, some left-hand controls, and a few knobs in the front. And this was all very impressive. Raymond said that he wanted us to see this because he was going to design a commercial product based on it. Over the years, from time to time, Raymond would ask us to design a circuit for him. Then he'd come up from New York City and pick it up, or tell us what else he'd want. This happened every couple of months, and we became fairly good friends... ''Raymond Scott had brilliant intuition. He once said to me, 'The trouble with you is that you believe just because you think about something, then it's done.' I was having a hell of a problem managing my time. Raymond put his finger on part of the problem.'' —BOB MOOG Now we cut to 1964. We began building synthesizers in Trumansburg, near Ithaca in central New York State. He used to come up to Trumansburg periodically, to give me new assignments and check up on how our work was coming. We built circuits for Raymond, but often he wouldn't tell us what they were for. He was always very protective of his ideas and current projects. And he wasn't ashamed of it. He'd tell me, 'It's none of your business. Just build this circuit, and I'll take it from there.' The listening public first became aware of the electronic music medium subliminally, through radio and TV commercials. Raymond Scott explored electronic sounds in widely-heard commercials during the 1950s and '60s, well before electronics infiltrated pop music through the Rock and Roll idiom. Raymond got a lot of his electronic music into radio and television, but he also went much further out and did pieces of music with the equipment he built. They don't sound as weird anymore, they sound similar to what artists are doing today. Raymond Scott was definitely in the forefront of developing electronic music technology, and in the forefront of using it commercially as a musician. He was the first — he foresaw the use of sequencers and electronic oscillators to make sound — these were the watershed uses of electronic circuitry. He didn't always work in the standard ways, but that didn't matter because he had so much imagination, and so much intuition, that he could get something to work. And do exactly what he wanted it to do. Raymond Scott was one of those rare people who was influenced by the future. Not by the past, not by the present, but by the future. He did things that later turned out to be directly for the future. I think Raymond was tuned into the celestial, cosmic network — the one that is out there in time as well as space — to a greater extent than the rest of us. Text above is © Bob Moog

Multimedia Presentation in Philadelphia

From BowerBird.org:

To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Raymond Scott's music, Jeff E. Winner of the Scott archives presents the life of the late composer and inventor with rare audio and video. This evening will include a 60 minute presentation by Winner and a complete screening (100 minutes) of the documentary, “DECONSTRUCTING DAD: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott.” The award-winning film, which Winner co-produced and appears in, features interviews with movie music composer John Williams ("Star Wars"), Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, and DJ Spooky aka Paul D. Miller, as well as Raymond Scott's family, colleagues, and archival footage of Scott himself.

Jeff E. Winner is a music producer, historian, and researcher specializing in early electronica. He has written for the Oxford University Press "Grove Dictionary Of American Music," the MIT Press anthology "Sound Unbound" with Chuck D of Public Enemy, Moby, Scanner, and Steve Reich, features in "Electronic Musician" magazine, and liner notes for the DVD/CD series "OHM: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music" with Sonic Youth, Bob Moog, John Cage, and Brian Eno. Mr. Winner was also editor and interviewer for "WE ARE DEVO," the band's only biographical book (Firefly Press).

• THIS EVENT IS FREE. Friday, March 16th, at 8pm. DETAILS: here

UPDATE: Irwin Chusid is now planning to join me for this event and participate.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN Arrangements: "2 Pianos, 4 Hands"

In 1943, LEONARD BERNSTEIN wrote this piano duet arrangement of Raymond Scott's 1938 hit tune, "In An 18th Century Drawing Room," published under Bernstein's pseudonym Lenny Amber. (Bernstein is a German and Jewish name meaning "amber.") Bernstein, who, according to THE NEW YORK TIMES, was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history," also arranged versions of Scott's classics, "Huckleberry Duck," "The Toy Trumpet," "The Penguin," and "Powerhouse," seen below:

Powerhouse Road

During a research mission in April of 2001 to locate Raymond Scott’s Manhasset mansion, Piet Schreuders and I found only this evidence of its previous existence — the access road to the house that Scott named in honor of his classic tune. The mansion can be seen in its full glory here:

Caption on this photo reads: "On the sloping backyard lawn of their Manhasset, Long Island, home, singer Dorothy Collins and her husband, composer-conductor Raymond Scott, hoist daughter Debbie, 2½, aloft for a giddy dash downhill. Their 30-room home is in the background. Credit (United Press Photo) 5/3/57"

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

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.

Jean Shepherd:"You'll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid!"

Although best-known as writer and narrator of the classic 1983 holiday movie, A CHRISTMAS STORY, Jean Shepherd began a long radio career in 1948. He was not a traditional DJ who kept silent while playing records; he was a monologist who carefully chose music beds to underscore his unique narrative style. At least twice he pontificated over Raymond Scott:

 • In 1965 Shep, fascinated by Scott's SOOTHING SOUNDS FOR BABY electronic lullaby series, built an entire program theme around it, according SSFB perhaps its only airplay until the CD reissues more than 3 decades later.

 • The following year, Shep delivered one of his trademark rants about amusement parks as he spun "In An 18th Century Drawing Room," which Scott composed in 1937: listen here.

Electronium Restoration

Although Raymond Scott designed and built several versions of his automatic composing-performing machine, The Electronium, the only surviving model was one commissioned by Berry Gordy for Motown. Following Scott's death in 1994, the non-functioning instrument was purchased by Mark Mothersbaugh, who promised to restore it. That resurrection is now being attempted by engineer Darren Davison. 

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.

Never Love A Stranger

Twenty years after Raymond Scott's brief stint appearing on-camera in Hollywood films with his Quintette, he was still occasionally scoring movie soundtracks. Here's the opening theme from 1958's NEVER LOVE A STRANGER, starring John Drew Barrymore, & Steve McQueen, sung by Scott's 2nd wife, Dorothy Collins: YouTube

record collector's heaven

Jeff Winner of RaymondScott.com on a research expedition at UMKC's Marr Archives, June 2008, reviewing archival press clippings

The Raymond Scott audio collection (thousands of discs and tapes from 1930 to 1980) were donated to the Marr Sound Archives at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in 1995. Here's a great 6-minute tour of the place, "Momentum and Marr," produced, directed, and edited by Jordan Kerfeld in 2008.

In the mini-doc, Marr director Chuck Haddix explains his mission: "I don't collect records—I collect collectors."

Hat tip to our buddy Mark Greenberg at the Mayfair Workshop blog for noting the video and providing a concise overview of what's in the collection. As a member of Chicago's legendary Coctails, Mark was in the forefront of the Scott revival. The band was performing "Powerhouse" in 1991, when Scott was still a forgotten footnote in music history.

Our Raymond Scott CD releases (on Basta) were compiled from recordings stored at Marr. On a number of occasions, Gert-Jan Blom, Jeff Winner, and I have conducted on-site audio archeology for such projects as Manhattan Research, Inc., Microphone Music, and Ectoplasm. More releases are planned; it's a deep collection of unheard music. Scott was a maniac about recording rehearsals, demos, radio airchecks, mic placement takes, and idea development. An electronica follow-up to Manhattan Research is in the pipeline.

Unfortunately, despite technological progress in field of archiving science, not everything can be restored and preserved:

Trouble With Hitchcock

For years I've asserted that Six Degrees Of Separation can be reduced to two or three if Raymond Scott is in the equation. Case in point: Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 feature, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY. This morbid comedy/murder mystery connects Scott to numerous Hollywood heavies including Shirley MacLaine (in her debut role), John Forsythe, legendary Academy Award-winning soundtrack composer Bernard Herrmann, and even a young Jerry Mathers (later a TV icon in the title role on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER).

Scott's song "Flaggin' The Train To Tuscaloosa" is sung by Forsythe's character, Sam Marlowe, early in the movie. According to an April 1955 Daily Variety news item, Scott originally composed the tune as a commercial jingle for the YOUR HIT PARADE television series (on which he conducted the orchestra during the decade). Variety noted that the melody had different lyrics for the commercial, with new words penned by accomplished songsmith Mack David for the Hitchcock film. (Mack is the brother of Hal David, who co-wrote with Burt Bacharach — another legend three degrees from Scott.)

• Listen to the song, from a scratchy 45 single, performed by Ray McKinley & His Orchestra: here

ABOVE: from the opening credits

BELOW: Shirley MacLaine & John Forsythe are pictured on the cover of the piano sheet music

Pasadena Creative Music

The mission of the Pasadena Creative Music series is to showcase many of "the most fun and imaginative performing artists in Los Angeles." And on Monday, October 12th at 6pm, the second half of the program will "explore the music of the legendary composer and inventor Raymond Scott, whose music is widly known through its placement in many Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies favorites, despite the fact that he never actually scored for cartoons. The Los Angeles Raymond Scott Sextet will play a set of these exciting pieces in their original jazz concert context."

Details here: PasadenaCreativeMusic.com

Catch A Brain Wave

On Sunday, August 28th, 1949, newspapers across the globe published this article & cartoon about Raymond Scott's “brain wave” music of the future:

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.

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.”

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."

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