Raymond Scott

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Raymond Scott
Background information
Birth name	Harry Warnow
Born	(1908-09-10)September 10, 1908 Brooklyn, New York, United States
Died	February 8, 1994(1994-02-08) (aged 85) North Hills, Los Angeles, California
Genres	Jazz, exotica, electronica
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer, arranger, bandleader, audio engineer, inventor, producer
Instruments	Piano, celeste, electronic devices
Years active	1931–1985
Labels	Brunswick, Columbia, Decca, Master, Audivox, MGM, Coral, Everest, Top Rank, Epic, Basta
Associated acts	Secret Seven, Your Hit Parade Orchestra
Website	raymondscott.net

Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow, September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994)^[1] was an American composer, band leader, pianist, recording studio maverick, and inventor of electronic instruments.

Scott never scored cartoon soundtracks, but his music is familiar to millions because Carl Stalling adapted it in over 120 Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and other Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. His compositions may also be heard in The Ren and Stimpy Show (which uses the original Scott recordings in twelve episodes), The Simpsons, Duckman, Animaniacs, The Oblongs, and Batfink. The only time he composed to accompany animation was three 20-second commercial jingles for County Fair Bread in 1962.

Early life and career[edit]

Scott was born in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrants, Joseph and Sarah Warnow.^[2] His older brother, Mark Warnow, a conductor, violinist, and musical director for the CBS radio program Your Hit Parade, encouraged his musical career.

A 1931 graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied piano, theory and composition, Scott, under his birth name, began his professional career as a pianist for the CBS Radio house band. His older (by eight years) brother Mark conducted the orchestra. Harry adopted the pseudonym "Raymond Scott" to spare his brother charges of nepotism when the orchestra began performing the pianist's idiosyncratic compositions. In 1935 he married Pearl Zimney.

In late 1936, Scott assembled a band from among his CBS colleagues, calling it the Raymond Scott Quintette. It was a six-piece group, but he thought Quintette (his spelling) sounded "crisper"; he also told a reporter that he feared "calling it a 'sextet' might get your mind off music."^{[citation needed]} His sidemen were Pete Pumiglio (clarinet); Bunny Berigan (trumpet, soon replaced by Dave Wade); Louis Shoobe (double); Dave Harris (tenor saxophone); and Johnny Williams (drums). They made their first recordings in New York on February 20, 1937, for Master Records, owned by music publisher/impresario Irving Mills (who was also Duke Ellington's manager).

The Quintette represented Scott's attempt to revitalize swing music through tight, busy arrangements and reduced reliance on improvisation. He called this musical style "descriptive jazz" and gave his works unusual titles like "New Year's Eve in a Haunted House", "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals" (recorded by the Kronos Quartet in 1993), and "Bumpy Weather Over Newark". Although his songs were popular with the public^{[citation needed]}, jazz critics^[who?] disdained them as novelty music. Besides being a prominent figure in recording studios and on radio and concert stages, Scott wrote and was widely interviewed about his sometimes controversial music theories for Down Beat, Metronome, and Billboard.

Scott believed in composing and playing by ear (quote: "You give a better performance if you skip the eyes").^{[citation needed]} He composed not on paper, but "on his band" — by humming phrases to his sidemen, or by demonstrating riffs and rhythms on the keyboard and instructing players to interpret his cues. It was all done by ear, with no written scores (a process known as head arrangements). Scott, who was also a savvy sound engineer, recorded the band's rehearsals on discs and used the recordings as references to develop his compositions. He reworked, resequenced, or deleted passages, or added themes from other discs to construct finished works. During the developmental process, he let his players improvise, but once complete, he regarded a piece as relatively fixed and permitted relatively little further improvisation. This practice alienated some jazz purists and critics^[who?]. Scott rigidly controlled the band's repertoire and style, but he rarely took piano solos, preferring to direct the band from the keyboard and leaving solos and leads to his sidemen. He also had a penchant for adapting classical motifs in his compositions. This annoyed some serious music authorities^[who?], who dismissed such practices as "trivializing the classics".^{[citation needed]}

The Quintette existed from 1937 to 1939 and recorded bestselling discs such as "Twilight in Turkey," "Minuet in Jazz," "War Dance for Wooden Indians," "Reckless Night on Board an Ocean Liner," "Powerhouse," and "The Penguin." One of Scott's popular compositions is "The Toy Trumpet", a cheerful pop confection that is instantly recognizable to many people who cannot name the title or composer. In the 1938 film Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Shirley Temple sings a version of the song. Trumpeter Al Hirt's 1964 rendition with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops performed a version. "In an Eighteenth-Century Drawing Room" is a pop adaptation of the opening theme from Mozart's Piano Sonata in C, K. 545.

Opening bars of melody line of "The Toy Trumpet"

In 1939 Scott turned his Quintette into a big band. When he was named music director by CBS radio three years later, he organized irst racially integrated radio band.^{[citation needed]} Over the next two years, he hired saxophonist Ben Webster, trumpeter Charlie Shavers, bassist Billy Taylor, trumpeter Emmett Berry, trombonist Benny Morton, and drummer Cozy Cole. In 1942, Scott—who once told an interviewer he wouldn't hire himself to play piano in his own bands^{[citation needed]}—relinquished his keyboard duties with his bands so he could concentrate on hiring, composing, arranging, and conducting. He returned to the keyboard later with some of his bands.

In 1941, he led a 13-piece orchestra to produce what he termed "silent music" in New York, making a great show of performing with very little sound. This was one of the earliest performances of the silent or near-silent music canon.^[3]

Middle career[edit]

After serving as music director for programs such as Broadway Bandbox from 1942 to 1944, Scott left the network. He composed and arranged music (with lyrics by Bernie Hanighen) for the 1946 Broadway musical Lute Song, starring Mary Martin and Yul Brynner.

In the late 1940s, contemporaneous with guitarist-engineer Les Paul's studio work with Mary Ford, Scott began recording pop songs using the layered multi-tracked vocals of his second wife, singer Dorothy Collins. A number of these were commercially released, but the technique failed to earn him the chart success of Les Paul and Mary Ford.

In 1948, Scott formed a six-man "quintet" which served for several months as house band for the CBS radio program Herb Shriner Time. The group made studio recordings, some of which were released on Scott's short-lived Master Records label. (This was not the Irving Mills-owned label of the same name; Scott allegedly named his label in tribute to the defunct Mills enterprise.)

When his brother Mark Warnow died in 1949, Scott succeeded him as orchestra leader on the CBS Radio show Your Hit Parade . During the following year, the show moved to NBC Television, and Scott continued to lead the orchestra until 1957. (Collins was a featured singer on Your Hit Parade.) The high-profile position paid well, but Scott considered it strictly a "rent gig" and used his salary to finance his electronic music research out of the limelight.

In 1950 Scott composed his first—and only known—classical work, entitled Suite for Violin and Piano. The five-movement suite was performed at Carnegie Hall on February 7, 1950, by violinist Arnold Eidus and pianist Carlo Bussotti, who recorded the work.^[4])

In 1958, while serving as an A&R director for Everest Records, Scott produced singer Gloria Lynne's album Miss Gloria Lynne.^[5] The sidemen included many of the same session players (e.g., Milt Hinton, Sam "The Man" Taylor, George Duvivier, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Eddie Costa, Kenny Burrell, Wild Bill Davis) who participated in Scott's 1959 Secret 7 recording project.

Electronics and research[edit]

Scott, who attended Brooklyn Technical High School, was a electronic music pioneer and adventurous sound engineer. During the 1930s and 1940s, many of his band's recording sessions found the bandleader in the control room, monitoring and adjusting the acoustics, often by revolutionary means. As Gert-Jan Blom & Jeff Winner wrote, "Scott sought to master all aspects of sound capture and manipulation. His special interest in the technical aspects of recording, combined with the state-of-the-art facilities at his disposal, provided him with enormous hands-on experience as an engineer."^[6]

In 1946, he established Manhattan Research, a division of Raymond Scott Enterprises, which he announced would "design and manufacture electronic music devices and systems."^{[citation needed]} As well as designing audio devices for his own personal use, Manhattan Research provided customers with sales and service for a variety of devices "for the creation of electronic music and musique concrete"^{[citation needed]} including components such as ring modulators, wave, tone and envelope shapers, modulators and filters. Of interest were instruments like the "keyboard theremin", "chromatic electronic drum generators", and "circle generators".^[7] Scott described Manhattan Research Inc. as "More than a think factory—a dream center where the excitement of tomorrow is made available today."^[8] Bob Moog, developer of the Moog Synthesizer, met Scott in the 1950s, designed circuits for him in the 1960s, and considered him an important influence.

Relying on several instruments of his invention, such as the Clavivox and Electronium, Scott recorded futuristic electronic compositions for use in television and radio commercials and records of electronic music. A series of three albums designed to lull infants to sleep, his work Soothing Sounds for Baby was released in 1964 with the Gesell Institute of Child Development. The public showed little interest in it.^[9] But Manhattan Research provided ear-catching sonic textures for commercials.

Scott developed some of the first devices capable of producing a series of electronic tones automatically in sequence. He later credited himself as being the inventor of the polyphonic sequencer. (It should be noted that his electromechanical devices, some with motors moving photocells past lights, bore little resemblance to the all-electronic sequencers of the late sixties.) He began working on a machine he said composed using artificial intelligence. The Electronium, as Scott called it, with its vast array of knobs, buttons and patch panels is considered the first self-composing synthesizer.^[10] Some of Raymond Scott's projects were less complex, but still ambitious. During the 1950s and 1960s, he developed and patented a large number of consumer products that brought electronically produced sounds into the homes and lives of Americans. Among these were electronic telephone ringers, alarms, chimes, and sirens, vending machines and ashtrays with accompanying electronic music scores, an electronic musical baby rattle and an adult toy that produced varying sounds dependent on how two people touched one another.^[11]It was Scott's belief that these devices would "electronically update the many sounds around us - the functional sounds."^[11]

Scott and Dorothy Collins divorced in 1964, and in 1967, he married Mitzi Curtis (1918–2012). During the second half of the 1960s, as his work progressed, Scott became increasingly isolated and secretive about his inventions and concepts; he gave few interviews, made no public presentations, and released no records. In 1966-67, Scott (under the screen credit "Ramond Scott") composed and recorded electronic music soundtracks for some early experimental films by Muppets impresario Jim Henson.

During his jazz/big band period, Scott had often endured tense relationships with musicians he employed (quote: "No one worked with Scott; everyone worked under Scott"). However, when his career became immersed in electronic gadgetry, he made friends with and seemed to prefer the company of technicians, including Bob Moog, Herb Deutsch, Thomas Rhea, and Alan Entenmann. From time to time Scott welcomed curious visitors to his lab, among them the renowned French electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey, in March 1960.

In 1969, Motown impresario Berry Gordy, tipped off about a mad musical scientist engaged in mysterious works, visited Scott at his Long Island labs to witness the Electronium in action. Impressed by the infinite possibilities, Gordy hired Scott in 1971 to serve as director of Motown's electronic music and research department in Los Angeles, a position Scott held until 1977. No Motown recordings using Scott's electronic inventions have yet been publicly identified.

Guy Costa, Head of Operations and Chief Engineer at Motown from 1969 to 1987, said about Scott's hiring:

"He started originally working [on the Electronium] out of Berry's house. They set up a room over the garages, and he worked there putting stuff together so Berry could get involved and see the progress. At one point Scott worked out of a studio. The unit never really got finalized—Ray had a real problem letting go. It was always being developed. That was a problem for Berry. He wanted instant gratification. Eventually his interest started to wane after a period of probably two or three years. Finally Ray took the thing down to his house and kept working on it. Berry kind of lost interest. He was off doing Diana Ross movies."

Scott later said he "spent 11 years and close to a million dollars developing the Electronium."^[12] Scott was thereafter largely unemployed, though hardly inactive. He continued to modify his inventions, eventually adapting computers and primitive MIDI devices to his systems. He suffered a series of heart attacks, ran low on cash, and became a subject on Where Are They Now?

Largely forgotten by the public by the 1980s, he suffered a stroke in 1987 that left him unable to work or engage in conversation.^[13] His recordings were largely out of print, his electronic instruments were cobweb-collecting relics, and his once-abundant royalty stream had slowed to a trickle.

Secret Seven[edit]

In 1959, Scott organized a band of top-tier jazz session musicians and recorded an album entitled The Unexpected, credited to The Secret Seven, and released on the Top Rank label.^[14] The secrecy extended to withholding the identity of the musicians in the album's liner notes. The players were later identified^{[citation needed]} as Elvin Jones, Milt Hinton, Kenny Burrell, Eddie Costa, Sam "The Man" Taylor, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Wild Bill Davis and Toots Thielemans.

The cartoon connection[edit]

In 1943 Scott sold his music publishing to Warner Bros., who allowed Carl Stalling, music director for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, to adapt anything in the Warner music catalog.

Stalling immediately began peppering his cartoon scores with Scott quotes, such as in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery. Besides being used in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, Scott's tunes have been licensed to The Simpsons, The Ren and Stimpy Show, Animaniacs, The Oblongs, Batfink, and Duckman. "Powerhouse" was quoted ten times in the Warner Brothers feature Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).^[14]

Obscurity and rediscovery[edit]

His legacy underwent a revival in the early 1990s after Irwin Chusid met Raymond and his wife Mitzi at their home in California and discovered a vast collection of unreleased recordings of rehearsals and studio sessions.^[15] In 1992, the release of Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights by Columbia, produced by Irwin Chusid with Hal Willner as executive producer, was the first major-label CD compilation of his 1937–39 six-man quintet. A year earlier, Chusid and Will Friedwald produced a CD of live Scott quintet broadcasts titled The Man Who Made Cartoons Swing for Stash Records. Around this time, the director of The Ren & Stimpy Show, John Kricfalusi, began using quintet recordings. In the late-1990s, the Beau Hunks, a Dutch ensemble formed to perform music created by Leroy Shield for the Laurel and Hardy movies, released two albums of by Scott's sextet: Celebration on the Planet Mars and Manhattan Minuet (both released by Basta Audio-Visuals). Members of the Beau Hunks (reconfigured as a "Saxtet", then a "Soctette") performed and recorded Scott works, sometimes in collaboration with the Metropole Orchestra.

"Powerhouse" has been used as a promotional bumper for the Cartoon Network and was used the rock band Rush in their 1978 song "La Villa Strangiato". The same tune was reinterpreted as "Bus to Beelzebub" by the New York band Soul Coughing, which also used "The Penguin" in their song "Disseminated." They Might Be Giants used Powerhouse in their song "Rhythm Section Want Ad".

In 1993, Warner Bros. music director Richard Stone scored an installment of Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs around "Powerhouse". The episode, entitled "Toy Shop Terror," had no dialogue except in the closing seconds, thus allowing his Stalling-meets-Spike Jones arrangement to dominate the soundtrack. In late 2006, "Powerhouse" began airing regularly as the soundtrack for a Visa check card TV commercial. It has also often been used as a bumper on "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!," NPR's weekly quiz show. It also appeared in The Simpsons, played over the method by which bowling alleys assemble new pins.

Clarinetist Don Byron has recorded and performed Scott's music, as have the Kronos Quartet, Ghost Train Orchestra, Steroid Maximus (J. G. Thirlwell), Jon Rauhouse, The Tiptons (with Amy Denio), Jeremy Cohen's Quartet San Francisco, Skip Heller, and Phillip Johnston. Robert Wendel arranged six Scott works and one medley for full symphony orchestra in the mid-1990s. The New York–based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette recorded an album (produced by Chusid) of radically modernistic interpretations of Scott compositions (Evolver Records, 2002) and stages sporadic performances. Classical pianist Jenny Lin covered Scott's "The Sleepwalker" on her album InsomniMania (Koch Classics, 2008), and has performed Scott's "Powerhouse" in concert.

The posthumously released 2-CD set, Manhattan Research Inc. (Basta, 2000, co-produced by Gert-Jan Blom and Jeff Winner) showcases Scott's pioneering electronic works from the 1950s and 1960s on two CDs (the package includes a 144-page hardcover book). Microphone Music (Basta, 2002, produced by Irwin Chusid with Blom and Winner as project advisors), explores the original Scott Quintette's work. The 2008 CD release Ectoplasm (Basta) chronicles a second (1948–49) incarnation of the six-man "quintet" format, with Scott's future wife Dorothy Collins singing on several tracks. In June 2017, Basta issued a 3-LP/2-CD set entitled Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space, featuring 61 unreleased electronic recordings made by Scott between 1961 and 1971 (Basta, 2017, produced by Gert-Jan Blom, Irwin Chusid, and Jeff Winner).^[16] AllMusic named the set one of the "Best Compilations of 2017."^[17]

In 2008, members of the West Point Concert Band and the band’s Field Music Group, The Hellcats, formed the Quintette 7 to perform Raymond Scott sextet repertoire. In 2010 they recorded the album Quintette 7 Plays the Music of Raymond Scott, which featured 21 Scott titles.^[18]

Devo founding member Mark Mothersbaugh, through his company Mutato Muzika, purchased Scott's only (non-functioning) Electronium in 1996, with the intention of restoring it to working order.^[10][19] In November 2012, the restoration team was able to get the Electronium running and producing basic sounds.^[20] In 2017 Brian Kehew began working on the restoration of the Electronium, in an effort partially financed by Gotye.^[21]

Death[edit]

On February 8, 1994, he died of pneumonia in North Hills, Los Angeles, California

Films and television[edit]

In addition to Warner Brothers cartoons (which were intended for theatrical screening), the following films include recordings or works composed or co-composed by Scott: Nothing Sacred (1937, various adapted standards); Ali Baba Goes to Town (1938, "Twilight in Turkey" and "Arabania"); Happy Landing (1938, "War Dance for Wooden Indians"); Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938, "The Toy Trumpet"; with special lyrics by Jack Lawrence); Just Around the Corner (1938, "Brass Buttons and Epaulettes" [performed by Scott's Quintette, but not composed by Scott]); Sally, Irene and Mary (1938, "Minuet in Jazz"); Bells of Rosarita (1945, "Singing Down the Road"); Not Wanted (1949, theme and orchestrations); The West Point Story (1950, "The Toy Trumpet"); Storm Warning (1951, "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals"); The Trouble with Harry (1955, "Flagging the Train to Tuscaloosa"; words by Mack David); Never Love a Stranger (1958, score); The Pusher (1960, score); Clean and Sober (1988, "Singing Down the Road"); Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989, "Powerhouse" [uncredited, affirmed in out-of-court settlement]); Search and Destroy (1995, "Moment Whimsical"); Funny Bones (1995, "The Penguin"); Lulu on the Bridge (1998, "Devil Drums"); Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003, "Powerhouse"); Starsky and Hutch (2005, "Dinner Music for Pack of Hungry Cannibals"); RocknRolla (2008, "Powerhouse"); Best of Enemies (2015, "Portofino"); The Space Between Us (2017, “Song of India”); and Won’t You Be My Neighbor (2018, “Waltz of the Diddles”).^[22]

Theater[edit]

• Lute Song (1946) - musical - composer and orchestrator; the production included what was arguably Scott's most-recorded "pop" song, "Mountain High, Valley Low" (lyrics by Bernard Hanighen)
• Peep Show (1950, produced by Mike Todd) - composed "Desire" to accompany the "Cat Girl" dance routine
• Powerhouse (2009, produced by Sinking Ship Productions), first staged during the New York International Fringe Festival, is a comedic biography of Scott choreographed with his music and recordings. It returned to the stage in 2014 for a three-week run at New York's New Ohio Theater.^[23]
• Manhattan Research, which premiered at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in August 2013, is a dance work set to Raymond Scott's music, choreographed by John Heginbotham.^[24]

Discography[edit]

• Raymond Scott and His Orchestra Play (MGM, 1953)
• This Time With Strings (Coral, 1957)
• Rock 'n Roll Symphony (Everest, 1958)
• The Secret 7: The Unexpected (Top Rank, 1960)
• Soothing Sounds for Baby volumes 1–3 (Epic, 1963)
• The Raymond Scott Project: Vol. 1: Powerhouse (Stash, 1991)
• The Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights (Columbia, 1992)
• Manhattan Research Inc. (Basta Music, 2000)
• Microphone Music (Basta Music, 2002)
• Ectoplasm (Basta Music, 2008)^[25]
• Suite for Violin and Piano (Basta Music, 2012)^[26]
• Raymond Scott Songbook (Li'l Daisy / Daisyworld, 2013)^[27]
• Raymond Scott Rewired (Basta Music, 2014)^[28]
• Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space (Basta Music, 2017)^[29]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Bloom, Ken. American song. The Complete Musical Theater Companion. 1877–1995. Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Schirmer Books, 1996.
• Holmes, Thom. "Early Synthesizers and Experimenters". Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis, 2008. pp. 161–164. ISBN 978-0-415-95781-6. 
• Chusid, Irwin and Jeff Winner, eds., Raymond Scott: Artifacts from the Archives, a 349-page e-publication of selected Scott electronic music ephemera from the archives of the University of Missouri—Kansas City
• Kernfeld, Barry Dean. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Macmillan Press, 1988.
• Larkin, Colin. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 3rd edition, Macmillan, 1998.
• Press, Jaques Cattell (Ed.). ASCAP Biographical Dictionary of Composers, Authors and Publishers, 4th edition, R. R. Bowker, 1980.
• Goldmark, Daniel, and Yuval Taylor, eds. The Cartoon Music Book (Chicago Review Press; 2002), ISBN 1-55652-473-0, ISBN 978-1-55652-473-8. Includes chapter by Irwin Chusid on how Scott's music has been adapted for cartoons

External links[edit]

• The Raymond Scott Collection (audio) at the Marr Sound Archives, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri
• The Raymond Scott Collection (documents) at the LaBudde Special Collections Department, University of Missouri, Kansas City
• Chusid, Irwin. "Raymond Scott: The First 100 Years", BoingBoing.net, September 10, 2008
• Grimes, William. "Raymond Scott, 85, a Composer For Cartoons and the Stage, Dies", The New York Times, February 9, 1994 (Retrieved February 22, 2010)
• Miller, Paul D., editor. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (MIT Press, May 2008), ISBN 978-0-262-63363-5, ISBN 978-0-262-63363-5. Chapter 18: "The World of Sound: A Division of Raymond Scott Enterprises," by Jeff E. Winner
• Raymond Scott on IMDb
• Raymond Scott Interview NAMM Oral History Library (1986)