Raymond Scott | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | Harry Warnow (1908-09-10)September 10, 1908 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | February 8, 1994(1994-02-08) (aged 85) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupations | |
| Instruments |
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| Years active | 1931–1985 |
| Labels | |
| Website | www |
| Relatives | Mark Warnow (brother) |
Raymond Scott (bornHarry Warnow; September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994)[1] was an American composer, band leader, pianist and record producer. Known best in his time as a composer ofproduction music, Scott is today regarded as an early pioneer ofelectronica.
Though Scott was never contracted to compose for animation, his music is familiar to millions becauseCarl Stalling adapted it in over 120Looney Tunes andMerrie Melodies films produced byWarner Bros. Cartoons. His compositions may also be heard inThe Ren and Stimpy Show (which uses Scott's recordings in twelve episodes),The Simpsons,Duckman,Animaniacs,The Oblongs,Batfink,Puppetoons, andSpongeBob SquarePants. The only time he composed to accompany animation was three 20-second commercial jingles for County Fair Bread in 1962.
Scott was born in Brooklyn, New York toRussian Jewish immigrants, Joseph and Sarah Warnow.[2] His older brother,Mark Warnow, was a conductor, violinist, and musical director for the CBS radio programYour Hit Parade and encouraged his musical career.
A 1931 graduate of theJuilliard School of Music, where he studied piano, theory and composition, Scott, under his birth name, began his professional career as a pianist for theCBS Radio house band. His brother, Mark, older by eight years, conducted the orchestra. He 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." His sidemen were Pete Pumiglio (clarinet);Bunny Berigan (trumpet, replaced by Dave Wade); Louis Shoobe (double bass); Dave Harris (tenor saxophone); andJohnny Williams (drums). They made their first recordings in New York on February 20, 1937, for Master Records, owned bymusic publisher/impresarioIrving Mills (Duke Ellington's manager).
The Quintette represented Scott's attempt to revitalizeswing music through tight, busy arrangements that reduced reliance onimprovisation. He called this 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 theKronos Quartet in 1993), and "Bumpy Weather Over Newark". Although his songs were popular with the public, jazz critics disdained them as novelty music. Besides being a prominent figure in recording studios and on radio and concert stages, Scott wrote and was interviewed inDownBeat,Metronome, andBillboard.
Scott believed in composing and playing by ear. 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 ashead 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, re-sequenced, and deleted passages, and 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 little further improvisation. Scott controlled the band's repertoire and style, but he rarely took piano solos, preferring to direct the band from the keyboard and leave solos and leads to his sidemen. He also had a penchant for adapting classical motifs in his compositions.
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 filmRebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,Shirley Temple sings a version of the song. TrumpeterAl Hirt's 1964 rendition withArthur Fiedler andthe Boston Pops performed a version. "In an Eighteenth-Century Drawing Room" is a pop adaptation of the opening theme from Mozart'sPiano Sonata in C, K. 545.
In 1939, Scott turned his Quintette into abig band. When he was named music director by CBS radio three years later, he organized the first racially integrated radio band. Over the next two years, he hired saxophonistBen Webster, trumpeterCharlie Shavers, bassistBilly Taylor, trumpeterEmmett Berry, trombonistBenny Morton, and drummerCozy Cole. In 1942, Scott relinquished his keyboard duties so he could concentrate on hiring, composing, arranging, and conducting. He returned to the keyboard 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 thesilent or near-silent music canon.[3]
After serving as music director for programsBroadway Bandbox from 1942 to 1944, Scott left the network. He composed and arranged music (with lyrics byBernie Hanighen) for the 1946 Broadway musicalLute Song starringMary Martin andYul Brynner.
In the late 1940s, contemporaneous with guitaristLes Paul's studio work withMary Ford, Scott began recording pop songs using the layeredmulti-tracked vocals of his second wife, singerDorothy 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 programHerb 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 showYour 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 onYour 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, entitledSuite for Violin and Piano. The five-movement suite was performed at Carnegie Hall on February 7, 1950, by violinistArnold Eidus and pianist Carlo Bussotti, who recorded the work.[4])
In 1958, while serving as an A&R director forEverest, Scott produced singerGloria Lynne's albumMiss Gloria Lynne.[5] The sidemen included many of the same session players (e.g.,Milt Hinton,Sam Taylor,George Duvivier,Harry "Sweets" Edison,Eddie Costa,Kenny Burrell,Wild Bill Davis) who participated in Scott's 1959 Secret 7 recording project.
Scott, who attendedBrooklyn Technical High School, was anelectronic 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 and 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 Incorporated. As well as designing electronic audio devices for personal use, over the years Scott sold and supported a number of related projects,[7] including components such asring modulators, wave, tone, and envelope shapers, modulators, and filters. Of interest were the "keyboard theremin", "chromatic electronic drum generators", and "circle generators".[8] Scott described Manhattan Research as "More than a think factory—a dream center where the excitement of tomorrow is made available today."[9]Bob Moog, developer of theMoog 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 own invention, such as theClavivox andElectronium, 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 workSoothing Sounds for Baby was released in 1964 with theGesell Institute of Child Development. The public showed little interest in it.[10] 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 credited himself as the inventor of the polyphonicsequencer. Hiselectromechanical 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 could compose by artificial intelligence. The Electronium, as Scott called it, with its array of knobs, buttons, and patch panels is considered the first self-composing synthesizer.[11]
Some of Raymond Scott's projects were less complex but still ambitious. During the 1950s and 1960s, he developed and patented electronic telephone ringers, alarms, chimes, and sirens,vending machines, andashtrays with accompanying electronic music scores, an electronic musical baby rattle, and an adult toy that produced varying sounds depending on how two people touched each another.[12] He believed these devices would "electronically update the many sounds around us – the functional sounds."[12]
While these devices foreshadowed the future of electronic music, they were not commercially successful. As Mark Brend wrote atReverb.com:
Hindsight reveals Scott as more ideas-man than business-man. Glossy brochures advertised a dizzying array of his inventions: electronic doorbells,multitrack tape recorders, rhythm machines, sequencers, and instruments such as the Clavivox, a kind of keyboard theremin. But these rarely sold. It's possible that didn't bother Scott too much, as through the '50s he was still earning well from the first phase of his career and had a new income stream composing electronic jingles—forSprite,Nescafé, and Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, among others.[13]
Scott and Dorothy Collins divorced in 1964, and in 1967 he married Mitzi Curtis (1918–2012). During the second half of the 1960s, he became isolated and secretive about his inventions; 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 experimental films byMuppets creatorJim Henson.
During his big band period, Scott endured tense relationships with musicians he employed. But when his career became immersed in electronic gadgetry, he preferred the company of technicians, such as Bob Moog,Herb Deutsch, Thomas Rhea and Alan Entenmann. Scott welcomed curious visitors to his lab, among them French electronic music pioneerJean-Jacques Perrey in March 1960.
In 1969,Berry Gordy ofMotown visited Scott at his Long Island labs to witness theElectronium in action. Impressed by the possibilities, Gordy hired Scott in 1971 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:
Scott later said he "spent 11 years and close to a million dollars developing the Electronium."[15] After leaving Motown he was mostly unemployed, though hardly inactive. He continued to modify his inventions, adapting computers and primitiveMIDI devices to his systems. He suffered a series of heart attacks, ran low on cash, and became a subject onWhere 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.[16] His recordings were largely out of print, his electronic instruments were cobweb-collecting relics, and his royalty stream had slowed to a trickle.
In 1959, Scott organized a band of top-tier jazz session musicians and recorded an album entitledThe Unexpected, credited to the Secret Seven, and released on theTop Rank label.[17] Musicians performing on the album includedSam “The Man” Taylor,Harry “Sweets” Edison,Wild Bill Davis,Milt Hinton,Elvin Jones,Toots Thielemans, andKenny Burrell, as well as Scott's then-wife Dorthy Collins.[18][19]
In 1943, Scott sold his music publishing to Warner Bros., who allowedCarl Stalling, music director forLooney Tunes andMerrie Melodies, to adapt any composition, including Scott's, in the Warner music catalog.
Stalling began peppering his cartoon scores with Scott quotes, such as inThe Great Piggy Bank Robbery. Scott's tunes have been licensed toThe Simpsons,The Ren & Stimpy Show,Animaniacs,The Oblongs,Batfink,SpongeBob SquarePants, andDuckman. "Powerhouse" was quoted ten times in the Warner Brothers featureLooney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).[17] Scott's estate was notorious for being difficult to negotiate with for licensing, withNickelodeon andSpümcø taking a whole year to gain approval for the use of Scott's tracks inThe Ren & Stimpy Show. Said episodes were unavailable onParamount+ due to this issue.[20]
Interest in Scott's work was revived in the early 1990s, afterIrwin Chusid met Raymond and his wife Mitzi at their home in California and discovered a collection of unreleased recordings of rehearsals and studio sessions.[21] In 1992, the release ofReckless Nights and Turkish Twilights by Columbia, produced by Irwin Chusid withHal Willner as executive producer, was the first major-label compilation by his 1937–39 six-man quintet. A year earlier, Chusid andWill Friedwald produced an album of quintet broadcasts titledThe Man Who Made Cartoons Swing forStash. The director ofThe Ren & Stimpy Show,John Kricfalusi, began using quintet recordings. In the late-1990s,The Beau Hunks, a Dutch ensemble that performed music written byLeroy Shield forLaurel and Hardy movies, released two albums of by Scott's sextet:Celebration on the Planet Mars andManhattan 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 theMetropole Orchestra.
The posthumously releasedManhattan 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 releaseEctoplasm (Basta) chronicles a second (1948–49) incarnation of the six-man "quintet" format, with Scott's wife Dorothy Collins singing on several tracks. In June 2017, Basta issued a 3-LP/2-CD set entitledThree 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).[17] AllMusic named the set one of the "Best Compilations of 2017".[22]
Devo founding memberMark Mothersbaugh, through his companyMutato Muzika, purchased Scott's only (non-functioning) Electronium in 1996 with the intention of restoring it.[11][23]
J Dilla sampled "Lightworks" and "Bendix 1: The Tomorrow People" for the track "Lightworks" and "Sprite: Melonball Bounce" for the track "Workinonit" on his final albumDonuts.
In 2023, Scott received a posthumousGrammy Award nomination in the Best Instrumental Composition category for "Cutey and the Dragon." The work was begun on paper by Scott in 1982 and completed in 2022 byGordon Goodwin (who also received a nomination as co-composer). Its debut recording appears on the 2023 albumRaymond Scott Reimagined byQuartet San Francisco,Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, andTake 6.[24][25]
On February 8, 1994, Scott died of pneumonia inNorth Hills,Los Angeles,California.
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 byJack 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 byMack 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"); andWon't You Be My Neighbor (2018, "Waltz of the Diddles").[26]
In April 2021, Scott's "Powerhouse" was used in the CBS TV showYoung Sheldon, in the opening scene of the episode "Mitch's Son and the Unconditional Approval of a Government Agency" (season 4, ep. 14).[27]
Scott's son, film editor Stan Warnow, released the documentaryDeconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott in 2010.[28][29]
