Raymond Scott & his Electronium

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Composer, bandleader and inventor Raymond Scott was among the unheralded pioneers of contemporary experimental music.

His music is familiar to millions because Carl Stalling adapted it in over 120 classic Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and other Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.    

Of all of Scott's accomplishments, however, none was more important than the Electronium, one of the first synthesizers ever created in 1949. An "instantaneous composing machine," the Electronium generated original music via random sequences of tones, rhythms, and timbres; Scott himself denied it was a prototype synthesizer — it had no keyboard — but as one of the first machines to create music by means of artificial intelligence, its importance in pointing the way towards the electonic compositions of the future is undeniable. His other inventions included the "Karloff," an early sampler capable of recreating sounds ranging from sizzling steaks to jungle drums; the Clavinox, a keyboard Theremin complete with an electronic sub-assembly designed by a then 23-year-old Robert Moog; and the Videola, which fused together a keyboard and a TV screen to aid in composing music for films and other moving images.

Raymond Scott in his studio 

photographer unknown

Devo founding member Mark Mothersbaugh purchased Scott's only (non-functioning) Electronium in 1996, with the intention of restoring it to working order. In November 2012, the restoration team was able to get the Electronium running and producing basic sounds.        

Mark Mothersbaugh - 1996 

photographer unknown

Scott was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 10, 1908. His real name was Harry Warnow. His brother, Mark Warnow, a conductor, violinist, and musical director for the CBS radio program Your Hit Parade, encouraged his musical career.            

He was 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 reportedly adopted the pseudonym "Raymond Scott" to spare his brother charges of nepotism when the orchestra began performing the pianist's idiosyncratic compositions.     

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

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. There is a great video of his War Dance For Wooden Indians on YouTube (link below). While popular with the public, jazz critics disdained it 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 the leading music publications of the day, including Down Beat, Metronome, and Billboard.        

After serving as CBS radio music director for a number of variety programs (such as Broadway Bandbox) from 1942 to 1944, Scott left the network to pursue other projects. He composed and arranged music (with lyrics by Bernie Hanighen) for the 1946 Broadway musical, Lute Song, which was based on the 14th-century Chinese play Tale of the Pipa (Pi-Pa-Ji) by Gao Ming, and starred Mary Martin and Yul Brynner. 

Mary Martin & Yul Brynner

Lute Song publicity still

In 1950 Scott composed his first—and only known—"serious" (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 (link below).         

      

By the middle of the 1960s, Scott began turning increasingly away from recording and performing to focus on writing and inventing; a 1969 musical celebrating the centennial of Kentucky Bourbon was his last orchestral work, with his remaining years spent solely on electronic composition. Among his latter-day innovations was an early programmable polyphonic sequencer, which along with the Electronium later caught the attention of Motown chief Berry Gordy Jr., who in 1971 tapped Scott to head the label's electronic music research and development team. After retiring six years later, he continued writing — his last known piece, 1986's Beautiful Little Butterfly, was created on MIDI technology.          

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.         

In 1969, Motown Records 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 the Motown 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.  

Berry Gordy in Motown studio, 1960s 

photographer unknown

Largely forgotten by the public by the 1980s, Scott suffered a major stroke in 1987 that left him unable to work or engage in conversation. He died on February 8, 1994, in North Hills, Los Angeles, California; he was 85 years old. 

His legacy underwent a revival in the early 1990s after Irwin Chusid discovered a vast collection of unreleased recordings of rehearsals and studio sessions. In 1992, the release of Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights on Columbia produced by Irwin Chusid (with Hal Willner as executive producer) was the first major-label CD compilation of his groundbreaking 1937–39 six-man quintet. A year earlier, Irwin Chusid and Will Friedwald produced a CD of live Scott quintet broadcasts titled The Man Who Made Cartoons Swing for the Stash label. Around this time, the director of The Ren & Stimpy Show, John Kricfalusi, began hot-wiring his cartoon episodes with original Scott quintet 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 sextet (a.k.a. "Quintette") repertoire, Celebration on the Planet Mars and Manhattan Minuet (both released on Basta Audio-Visuals).            

    
        
Viewfinder links:         
         
Duke Ellington   
King Crimson & "Boz" Burrell        
Kronos Quartet               
    
Net links:         
         
Raymond Scott website           
Raymond Scott blog           
Discography (LP and CD)         
NY times ~      
           Beethoven Sonata and Scott Novelty at Carnegie Hall       
Boing Boing ~ Raymond Scott: The First 100 Years          

University of Missouri ~ Raymond Scott Collection   
San Diego Reader ~    
          Carl Stalling & Raymond Scott: composers of Looney Tunes music
Weirdo Music ~ Raymond Scott: Soothing Sounds For Baby       
NY Times ~ Raymond Scott, 85, Composer For Cartoons and Stage, Dies    
        
YouTube links:         
         
Raymond Scott -       
            Twilight in Turkey   
            Cindy Electronium (1959)
            Ectoplasm (1957)
            Happy Birthday To You - 1940         
The Raymond Scott Quintette -      
            War Dance For Wooden Indians     
            Ali Baba Goes to Town - 1937   
            Suicide Cliff
            Manhattan Minuet - 1939          
Mark Mothersbaugh & Raymond Scott's Motown Electronium   
        
       
         
         
           
         
Styrous® ~ Saturday, March 24, 2018

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