Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow, September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994), was an American composer, orchestra leader, pianist, engineer, recording studio maverick, and electronic instrument inventor. He was born in Brooklyn to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His brother, Mark Warnow, a conductor, violinist, and musical director for the radio program Your Hit Parade, encouraged his musical career. Though Scott never scored cartoon soundtracks, his music is familiar to millions because of its adaptation by Warner Brothers in over 120 classic Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck animated features. Scott's melodies have also been heard in twelve Ren & Stimpy episodes (which used the original Scott recordings), while making cameos in The Simpsons, Duckman, Animaniacs, The Oblongs, and Batfink. His composition "Powerhouse," besides being heard in 40+ classic WB cartoons, was quoted ten times in the major motion picture Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
Early Career and the Cartoon Connection
A 1931 graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, Scott began his professional career as a pianist for the CBS Radio house band. In 1936, while at CBS, he formed his band, the Raymond Scott Quintette. It was a six-piece group, but the puckish Scott thought quintette (his spelling) sounded "crisper" and told a reporter he feared that "calling it a 'sextet' might get your mind off music". The quintette was an attempt to revitalize Swing music through tight, busy arrangements and reduced reliance on improvisation. Scott called his musical style "descriptive jazz," and gave his idiosyncratic pieces unusual titles like "New Year's Eve in a Haunted House," "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," and "Reckless Night on Board an Ocean Liner." While popular with the public, jazz critics disdained it as novelty music.
Scott believed strongly in composing and playing by ear (quote: "You give a better performance if you skip the eyes"). 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 expecting players to interpret his cues. It was all done by ear, and no scores were written down (a process known as "head arrangements"). Scott, who was also a savvy sound engineer, recorded all rehearsals, took the acetates home, and reworked, resequenced, deleted, or inserted unrelated passages to arrive at a preferred final composition. During the process of developing a work, his players were allowed to improvise, but once complete, the piece became relatively fixed and little improvisation was permitted — a practice that alienated many jazz purists and critics. Scott also had a penchant for appropriating classical motifs in his compositions, which earned him the wrath of some serious music authorities who dismissed such practices as "trivializing the classics." The public, who bought his records by the millions, seemed undeterred by any controversy.
The Quintette existed from 1937 to 1939, and racked up numerous big-selling discs, including "Twilight in Turkey," "In An Eighteenth Century Drawing Room," and "The Penguin." In 1939, Scott, in the prevailing fashion of the Swing Era, expanded his musical canvas by recruiting a big band. When Scott was appointed music director of CBS radio in 1942, he made history by breaking the "color barrier," organizing the first racially integrated studio band. He hired some of the hottest black jazz heavyweights of the day, such as saxophonist Ben Webster, trumpeter Charlie Shavers, and drummer Cozy Cole.
Though commonly believed to be a cartoon music composer, in fact Scott never wrote a note for a cartoon in his life. According to his wife, not only did he not compose for cartoons, he didn't even watch them. His historical and inadvertent renown as "the man who made cartoons swing" began in 1943 when Scott sold his music publishing to Warner Brothers. Carl Stalling, music director for Warner's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, was allowed to adapt anything in the Warner music catalog, and immediately began peppering his scores with Scott quotes. Besides being used in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, Scott's tunes have been licensed to propel the hijinks of The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy, Animaniacs, The Oblongs, Batfink, and Duckman cartoons. "Powerhouse" was quoted ten times in the 2003 full-length WB feature Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
Aside from his familiar cartoon melodies, one of Scott's best-known compositions is "The Toy Trumpet," a cheerful pop-music 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 with lyrics. Another Scott mainstay, "In An Eighteenth-Century Drawing Room," is an unremarkable but commercially successful pop adaptation of the opening theme from Mozart's Piano Sonata in C, K. 545.
Opening bars of melody line of "The Toy Trumpet"
Electronic period
Scott, who attended a technical high school in Brooklyn, was an early 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. In 1946, Scott established Manhattan Research, Inc., which he announced would "design and manufacture electronic music devices and systems." Bob Moog, developer of the Moog Synthesizer, met Scott in the 1950s, designed circuits for him in the 1960s, and acknowledged him as an important influence. As well as designing novel instruments such as the Clavivox and Electronium, Scott recorded records of entirely electronic music, such as 1963's groundbreaking Soothing Sounds for Baby, a series of albums designed to lull infants to sleep, and which today sounds uncannily like the ambient work of Tangerine Dream or Brian Eno from the mid 1970's. In those days, his electronic music did not find much favor with the record-buying public, but his electronics lab, "Manhattan Research, Inc." had considerable success in providing striking, ear-catching sonic textures for broadcast commercials.
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 then-wife, singer Dorothy Collins. A number of these were commercially released, but the technique failed to earn Scott the chart success of Les and Mary. When his brother Mark Warnow passed away in 1949, Scott succeeded him as orchestra leader on the popular radio show Your Hit Parade. The following year, the show moved to television, and Scott continued to lead the orchestra until 1957. (Dorothy Collins was a featured singer on YHP.)
Although the high-profile position paid well, Scott considered it strictly a "rent gig," and used his lavish salary to finance his electronic music research and development, albeit largely out of the public limelight. 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 which would compose using artificial intelligence. He later dubbed it "The Electronium."
Scott and Dorothy Collins divorced in 1964; in 1967 he married Mitzi Curtis. 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. From time to time he welcomed curious visitors to his lab, among them the eccentric outsider Bruce Haack, who also built electronic instruments and (with no involvement from Scott) recorded numerous LPs of somewhat subversive children's music. During his jazz/big band period, Scott had often endured tense relationships with musicians; however, when his career became immersed in electronic gadgetry, he made friends with and seemed to prefer the company of technicians, including Bob Moog, Thomas Rhea, Alan Entenmann and future Muppetmaster Jim Henson (for whose early experimental films Scott composed and recorded electronic soundtracks).
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 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 eventually became a mere "Where Are They Now?" subject.
Obscurity and Rediscovery
Having been largely forgotten by the public by the 1980s, Scott suffered a major stroke in 1987 which left him unable to work or engage in conversation. His recordings were largely out of print, his electronic instruments were cobweb-collecting relics, and his once-abundant royalty stream had slowed to a barely-enough-to-pay-the-bills trickle.
His legacy underwent a revival in the early 1990s with the release of Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights (Columbia, 1992, produced by Irwin Chusid with Hal Willner), the first CD compilation of his groundbreaking 1937-39 six-man quintet. Around this time, the director of Ren & Stimpy, John Kricfalusi, began hot-wiring his cartoon episodes with original Scott quintette recordings. In the late-1990s, the Beau Hunks (a Dutch ensemble originally formed to perform music created by Leroy Shield for the Laurel and Hardy movies) released two albums of Scott's music. Various members of the Beau Hunks (reconfigured as a "Saxtet," then a "Soctette") later performed and recorded various Scott works, sometimes in collaboration with the Metropole Orchestra.
"Powerhouse" has been used as a promotional bumper for the Cartoon Network, as well has having been quoted by the rock band Rush in their 1978 song "La Villa Strangiato" on their Hemispheres album. The same tune was reinterpereted as the song "Bus to Beelzebub" by the New York band Soul Coughing, who have used Scott samples in other compositions, such as Scott's "The Penguin" in their song "Disseminated". They Might Be Giants have also incorporated "Powerhouse" into their music, briefly including it in their song "Rhythm Section Want Ad" from their self-titled 1986 debut album. In 1993, Warner Bros. music director Richard Stone scored an entire installment of Animaniacs around "Powerhouse" (the episode, entitled "Toy Shop Terror," notably had no dialogue except in the closing seconds, thus allowing Stone's Stalling-meets-Spike Jones arrangement to dominate the soundtrack). In late 2006, "Powerhouse" began airing regularly as the soundtrack for a humorous 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.
Clarinetist Don Byron has recorded and performed Scott's music, as have the Kronos Quartet, Steroid Maximus (J. G. Thirlwell), Jon Rauhouse, The Tiptons (with Amy Denio), Jeremy Cohen Violinjazz 4tet, Skip Heller, Phillip Johnston, and others.
Manhattan Research, Inc. (Basta, 2000) showcases Scott's pioneering electronic works from the 1950s and '60s on two CDs (the package includes a 144-page hardcover book). Microphone Music (Basta, 2002) is a more thorough exploration of the original RS quintet's work, covering most of its important titles as well as previously unreleased material.
The New York-based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette has recorded an album and does occasional performances of radically modernistic interpretations of Scott compositions.
Mark Mothersbaugh, of Devo and Rugrats fame, purchased Scott's (non-functioning) Electronium in 1996, with the intention of restoring it to working order [1], but with no progress in that direction so far.
The year 2008 will mark the centennial of Scott's birth.
Quotations
- "Perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely 'think' his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener." —Raymond Scott, 1949
- "The composer must bear in mind that the radio listener does not hear music directly. He hears it only after the sound has passed through a microphone, amplifiers, transmission lines, radio transmitter, receiving set, and, finally, the loud speaker apparatus itself." —Raymond Scott, 1938
- "Being introduced to the music of Raymond Scott was like being given the name of a composer I feel I have heard my whole life, who until now was nameless. Clearly he is a major American composer."—David Harrington, Kronos Quartet
- "It's those front-line types that go into uncharted areas, and pave the way for others. Life is short. Always go to the source, sources like Raymond Scott."—Henry Rollins
- "I had a big thing for Raymond Scott loops -- 'Bus to Beelzebub' is also Raymond Scott -- hell, if Soul Coughing ended tommorrow I'd probably eke out a living producing hiphop records, using nothing but breakbeats, Raymond Scott, and Carl Stalling's Warner Bros. orchestra playing Raymond Scott compositions."—Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing
- "Quirky, memorable [Scott] themes like 'Powerhouse' in Warner Bros. cartoons arguably helped shape the postwar musical aesthetic as much as anything Elvis or the Beatles did."—John Corbett, Chicago Reader
- “Raymond Scott was definitely in the forefront of developing electronic music technology, and in the forefront of using it commercially as a musician.”—Bob Moog
Samplings, Remixes, and Contemporary Covers
- Gorillaz - Their self titled album Gorillaz (2001), featured a track titled "Man Research (Clapper)" which uses samples from "In the Hall of the Mountain Queen" on Scott's Manhattan Research, Inc.
- J Dilla - His album Donuts (2006), featured "Lightworks", a remix of the track of the same name on Scott's Manhattan Research, Inc.
- El-P - His solo album "Fantastic Damage" (Def Jux 2002), features a track named "T.O.J" that contains samples from "Cyclic Bit", "Ripples (Montage)" and "County Fair (Instrumental)" from Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research, Inc..
- Soul Coughing - Their album Irresistible Bliss (1996), features a track titled "Disseminated" which uses samples from "The Penguin" by the Raymond Scott Quintette (reissued version found on the CD Microphone Music); the group's album Ruby Vroom (1994) features a track titled "Bus to Beelzebub" which adapts a motif from Scott's composition "Powerhouse"; on the same album the track "Uh, Zoom Zip" uses an uncredited sample from Scott's "The Toy Trumpet," although the tempo of the sample has been manipulated as to be near-unrecognizable
- The Kleptones - Used a sample of "IBM MT/ST: The Paperwork Explosion" in their song "Work" off of their album A Night At The Hip-Hopera.
- Freezepop - Recorded cover of "Melonball Bounce," electronic commercial jingle composed by Scott around 1960 for the soft drink Sprite.
- The Boys, early 1990s R&B band who recorded for Motown, based "The Saga Continues" on melody of Scott's "Powerhouse"
- Venus Hum recorded cover of "Lightworks," Scott electronic commercial jingle
Works in Films
The following films include recordings and/or compositions 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"); Just Around the Corner (1938, "Brass Buttons and Epaulettes"); Sally, Irene and Mary (1938, "Minuet in Jazz"); Bells of Rosarita (1945, "Singing Down the Road"); Not Wanted (1949, theme and orchestrations); West Point Story (1950, "The Toy Trumpet"); The Trouble With Harry (1955, "Flagging the Train to Tuscaloosa"); Never Love a Stranger (1957, score); The Pusher (1960, "Where Have You Been, Billy Boy?"); 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")
Work on Broadway
- 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 Bernie Hanighen).
External links/Reference
- Official Raymond Scott web site, by Jeff E. Winner, complete and detailed, including samples of Raymond Scott's music.
- Bob Moog remembers Raymond Scott, in Bob Moog's own words, the late Moog recalls his personal and professional memories of Raymond Scott
- The Cartoon Music Book, edited by Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor, includes chapter by Irwin Chusid chronicling the use of Scott's music in cartoons over the decades
- Audio samples, including portions of "Powerhouse" and "The Toy Trumpet"