Quartet San Francisco in NYC

The Quartet San Francisco, whose new CD (Whirled Chamber Music) contains seven Raymond Scott tunes, will perform in New York on Sunday, October 21. They've got an in-store at Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center at 2 pm, and a 7 pm concert at Christ & St. Stephen's Church (W. 69th St. between Broadway/Columbus). A busy tour schedule follows.

Update (06 DEC 07): Grammy nomination!

Ecto-sketch

Ectoplasm, the forthcoming first CD collection of recordings by Raymond Scott's 1948-49 Quintet, features cover art by the late Jim Flora. The work first publicly appeared in a 1951 issue of Mademoiselle magazine illustrating a story by Robert Lowry entitled "The Mammoth Molar." The origins of the art, however, can be traced farther back to Flora's early 1940s sketchbooks:

Does that mean the Ecto-cover actually depicts Kid Ory?

HT: Jeff Winner

The Cartoon Gene

AllAboutJazz.com reveals:

"Scientists working diligently in a laboratory somewhere recently discovered a DNA strand and have identified it as the Cartoon Gene. This revelation proves the visual link between animation and sound. What they found is that cartoons permanently imprint sounds on your brain, for instance the sound of a character sneaking up stairs is a quickly rising pizzicato violin. That is why exposure to the music of Raymond Scott, adapted for Warner Brothers, brings automatic memories to anyone over forty."

End of the Century

Today marks the 99th anniversary of the birth of Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow, in Brooklyn). Countdown begins to the centennial.

Photo taken in 1934 by Scott's lifelong friend Paul Gordon. At the time Harry, age 25, was an emerging composer ("Christmas Night in Harlem" was a big hit that year) as well as a hotshot session pianist in the CBS radio network orchestra conducted by his older brother, Mark Warnow. It was around this time that Harry changed his name to "Raymond Scott." He often told interviewers that he lifted the name out of the Manhattan phonebook, and that he liked the name because it was "crisp" and had "good rhythm." Apocryphal? Works for us.

Jeff Winner, who created and maintains RaymondScott.com and co-produced Manhattan Research, Inc., offers his birthday toast:

Much of my understanding of the 20th century came from Raymond Scott. Over the past decade I've studied his fascinating career and life in great detail; this gave me a greater awareness of the achievements of the past 100 years. The 1900s saw dramatic leaps of human advancement and technological invention. Scott was inspired by the optimistic spirit of this progress, and became a major player in both artistic and technical ways.

On September 9, 1908, Orville Wright made the first experimental flight to catch air for an hour. The following day, coincidentally, Raymond Scott was born. Scott's musical journey started as a kid with a player piano in his dad's music shop. In 1949 Scott wrote music that foresaw "the first experimental rocket express to the moon." Twenty years later, NASA did it. While aviators went from Kitty Hawk to the moon, Scott went from a player piano to synthesizers, sequencers, and homemade drum machines. They were both striving for a celebration on the planet Mars.

Happy birthday, Raymond, and thank you for the history lessons. I'm certain Earthlings will love your work even more in another 99 years. Especially if they're listening during a commute to the moon.

montage by EsoTek

Puff daddy

Last year, Steve Cloutier directed a short film, The Chimney, about a nicotine addict. It is NOT an anti-smoking jeremiad—it's a humorous take on a popular vice that millions of people find pleasurable. The film also involves bicycles—which have caused countless unnecessary deaths over the last century.

For his frantic soundtrack, Steve used the Raymond Scott Quintette's classic 1937 recording of "Powerhouse."

Steve dropped us a note: "I've just re-posted the movie because I was never satisfied with the quality of the original post. I was able to improve it a bit."

Neal Pollack on Raymond Scott

Writer and "alternadad" Neal Pollack on "Raymond Scott's Loony Tunes" at eMusic Spotlight:

"When you listen to Microphone Music, it's like Daffy Duck is burrowing a tunnel into your mind. Each song contains a perfectly calibrated mix of the whimsy and anarchy that forms the philosophical basis for every great cartoon since the genre's golden age. Scott's compositions are at once fantastical and very cool. The protagonist may be falling off a tall ladder or running from a dog at the moment, the songs say, but soon enough, he'll be taking a nice hot bath or shuffling off into the sunset in the company of a lady rabbit with long eyelashes and plenty of lipstick. The music is fun, trippy, and wholly original. Long may the six-piece Quintette reign."

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!

Civilization vs. Barbarism

Crazy Ay-rabs, beheaded infidels, insensitive Middle Eastern stereotypes, offensive Muslim cartoons, IEDs, abductions, gratuitous violence, Western imperialism, drugs, burqas, bestiality, and a makeshift Raymond Scott soundtrack.

Now THAT'S entertainment.

Kodachrome

Kodachrome (released on Basta in 2002) was, as the subtitle noted, a collection of "Compositions for Orchestra by Raymond Scott." The album was produced by Gert-Jan Blom (founder of The Beau Hunks), and features the Metropole Orchestra conducted by Jan Stulen.

This repertoire reflects a little-known side of Scott: serious orchestral composer with an idiosyncratic flair. Scott was a renowned big band leader in the early 1940s, but the tunes on Kodachrome are not Swing Era chestnuts. Most of the titles were, by Scott standards, obscure; none had been hits for the composer, and none were featured in cartoons or films. Dating from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, some had never been commercially released (e.g., "City of New York," "Minor Prelude," "Dreary Weather on Sixth Avenue," and "The Bullfighter and His Piccolo"); others had been released without fanfare or commercial success (e.g., "Naked City," "Symphony Under the Stars," and "Secret Agent"); and a few were radio rarities (e.g., "Rococo," "Hertz Theme," "Confusion Among a Fleet of Taxicabs Upon Meeting With a Fare"). Scores do not exist for many of these titles; performance transcriptions were made from archival recordings by members of the Metropole.

The magnificent cover was illustrated by Kellie Strøm. Here's a rough sketch from the artist:

At home with Raymond and Dorothy

Grainy Library of Congress reference copy of contact sheet chronicling Scott demonstrating one of his electronic gizmos to then-wife, singer Dorothy Collins, at their Long Island home. Year unknown, but likely mid-1950s. Judging from the slanted ceiling, the monstrous machine appears to be installed in their attic. Whether it was built or hauled up there is an intriguing question. The device could be an early version of the Electronium, Scott's "instantaneous composition-performance machine" which he developed in the 1960s. Whatever it is, the magnificent instrument no longer exists.
 
Addendum (28 July 07) Jeff Winner of RaymondScott.com adds: I included another (presumably earlier) version of this device on page 23 of the book accompanying the Manhattan Research CDs. Same room, same piano bench, same shirt & haircut. I have another pic of this instrument, but neither RS nor DC are in the frame. I've been hoping that sooner or later we'd find a photo of this device with some info written on the back, or a caption in an old magazine that would explain more detail, but I've had no luck in that department. Yet.

Powerhouse

"Powerhouse" is arguably one of Raymond Scott's three best-known works, along with "The Toy Trumpet" and "Mountain High, Valley Low" (from the 1946 Broadway musical Lute Song).

First recorded by the Raymond Scott Quintette in 1937, "Powerhouse" was covered by dozens of orchestras and small jazz combos worldwide in the following decade. In 1943, Scott sold his publishing rights to Advanced Music, a division of Warner Brothers, and that year Carl Stalling began peppering his Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoon scores with Scott melodies — "Powerhouse" being the most oft-quoted.

We don't know why Scott sold his publishing, although money is a good place to begin any conjecture. He was probably advised to sell rather than initiating such a transaction on his own. Scott was obsessed with music and engineering (not necessarily in that order) and inclined to leave the paperwork to trusted associates. (Not that such associates deserved to be "trusted." Late in life, explaining his depleted finances, Scott remarked that someone "managed my money until I managed to not have any.")

Once the publishing belonged to WB, Scott had no further involvement with licensing, other than to collect writer's royalties. He surely had nothing to do with the use of his melodies in Looney Tunes. There is no indication that Scott and Stalling ever met, or that Scott was even aware of Stalling, though Stalling was certainly hyper-aware of Scott's music.

There's more info about "Powerhouse" at Wikipedia.

Scott by Marc Crisafulli

pen and felt-tip marker on paper (1997)

Good Morning Cephalgia (animation)

Thomas Sebasian Smolenski writes:

"A few years ago I obtained some sheet music from the Raymond Scott archives so I might perform it for the soundtrack of my college senior thesis animation. Unfortunately I was never able to finish the animation or record the music because of the schedule I was on.

"What I finished (basically sans ending ... and a weak middle...) is available on YouTube.

"Recently I've been working in animation in and around Manhattan, and I've really wanted to play Scott's music again — mostly for myself, not so much for a soundtrack."

"Good Morning Cephalgia" contains five Raymond Scott Quintette recordings ("Powerhouse," "The Penguin," "Toy Trumpet," "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," and "In an 18th Century Drawing Room").

Smolenski is currently working at a studio called Flickerlab and animating a short for Conan O'Brien called "Pale Force."

Raymond Scott meets Jim Flora

In a design sense, anyway. Their professional paths nearly crossed: early in his career Scott recorded for Columbia Records but left the label in 1941, one year before Jim Flora was hired by Columbia's art department. In the late 1940s, Flora (1914-1998) launched a legacy by illustrating quirky, cartoonish jazz album covers for the label. His historical portfolio includes dozens more for RCA Victor during the 1950s.

Through my working relationship with Jim Flora Art LLC, the deceased artist's estate, I've long wanted to revive this tradition by using rare Flora art on new CDs. Seattle's Reptet released Do This! in 2006, the cover bedecked with a Flora three-eyed monster we call a "triclops." Later this year, the first CD collection of the 1948-49 Raymond Scott Quintet will feature a Flora cover (above) designed by the brilliant Dutch art director Piet Schreuders. The 1951 illustration was most likely rendered during Flora's Mexican idyll. Ectoplasm refers to a Scott composition on the CD, which this author is producing for Basta Audio-Visuals.

N.B.: The Lothars album Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas (released in 2000) adapted Flora's 1955 album cover art for This Is Benny Goodman and His Orchestra (RCA Victor).