Sight Reading
"Musical thoughts and afterthoughts"
Marco Bertoli
Nome: Marco Bertoli
Italian journalist, translator and music writer for italian Musica Jazz magazine, based in Milano, Italy.
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Raymond Scott
You rarely come across such a resolute devotion to an artist as the one professed by Irwin Chusid—–music producer, manager, journalist—–towards Raymond Scott, further proof of the peculiar nature of almost anything regarding this composer.
Scott, born Harold Warnow in 1908, died 1994, was an outsider of some success at the height of the Swing Era. Between 1937 and 1939 his sextet, which he pointedly referred to as Quintet, recorded many program pieces of bizarre inspiration including War Dance for Wooden Indians, New Year's Eve in a Haunted House, And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon. The label “jazz”, as it applies to his music, is effective only in describing the instruments in the orchestra.
Scott’s kinetic and, as it were, visual compositions, mostly bi-thematic (as is the case with the most celebrated, Powerhouse), relate loosely to the chamber-music mood of the contemporary small groups led by John Kirby. In fact, Scott would later employ Kirby’s arranger, Charlie Shavers. Other influences added to his melting pot of sound: a taste of the freakish from the “novelty” side of Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, the “futuristic” pieces Don Redman wrote for the Fletcher Henderson band in the Twenties and a fictitous exoticism straight from the Broadway stage. There is even a shade of the plaintive from the “Yiddish swing bands” of the Thirties. All of the above were executed with mechanical precision, with little or no room for improvisation or even swing, if not as quotation.
In 1943 Carl Stalling, music director at Warner Brothers, chose about twelve of these colorful and kinetic miniatures to comment on the hijinks of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck etc. Scott’s music owes its survival, both subliminal and fragmentary, to this interesting choice for cartoon soundtracks. From 1945 on, Scott devoted himself as inventor more than as composer, to the electronic synthesis of sound, a field in which he is an obscure pioneer. His subsequent output (published by Chusid in two CDs) could easily be seen as forerunner to genres such as ambient and techno.
Irwin Chusid’s discovery of Scott’s music was in all likeness written in the stars and happened, with a jolt of recognition on Chusid’s part, almost twenty years ago. This author/producer who authored a study on outsider music (Songs In the Key Of Z, A Cappella Books, 2000) has not only promoted Scott’s music republishing on CD, but has, in essence, created the Raymond Scott Orchestrette. The seven musicians of the Orchestrette were originally part of the twenty-five Chusid gathered in in New York in 1998 on the occasion of a concert of music by Raymond Scott. Chusid asked them not to try in any way to reproduce Scott’s Quintet, but rather to rethink the repertoire, taking all imaginable liberty with the arrangements.
This is exactly what one hears in the RSO’s performances and on their CD «Pushbutton Parfait» (Evolver, 2002). In the contemporary rhythmic pulse of Wayne Barker’s and Will Holshouser’s scores, (the former, sumptuous and neo-lounge , the latter, drier and therefore more faithful to the classic Scott sound) Scott’s music reaffirms its musical and poetic values through recreations whose charms lie mostly in their distance from the originals. Improvisation finds the ample room it was denied in the Quintet sides. Here is RSO’s lineup: Rob Thomas or Sam Bardfeld, violin, Michael Hashim, alto and soprano sax, Brian Dewan, miscellaneous instruments and vocals, George Rush, bass, Clem Waldmann, drums.
The new arrangements capitalize on the instrumentalists’ individual timbres: the opposite of what happened in the Quintet, where musicians were considered machines (and treated as such by Scott, according to Anita O’Day’s recollections). This “contrary” approach has led the Orechstrette to avoid Scott’s more popular hits (Toy Trumpet, Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals) as well as the more onomatopoeic (Bumpy Weather Over newark, Serenade to a Lonesome Railroad Station). What’s astounding are the acoustical renditions of a couple of Scott’s electronic tunes, Little Miss Echo and Bass Line Generator, which also show the composer’s skill in manipulating minimalistic musical ideas.
How do the RSO’s renditions compare to the originals? The general feeling is of a dehydrated music with water added, sometimes a few bubbles and maybe a little colorful umbrella. The extra ingredient is, essentially, the human warmth of an expressively uninhibited execution that might have bugged Raymond Scott. He was a visionary artist but a timid and repressed man, lost in his dreams of a musical sound “ethereal, immaterial, full of space” (from a 1937 interview with Popular Mechanics), in pursuit of which, aided by machinery of his own devising, he would spend the rest of his days.
Scott, born Harold Warnow in 1908, died 1994, was an outsider of some success at the height of the Swing Era. Between 1937 and 1939 his sextet, which he pointedly referred to as Quintet, recorded many program pieces of bizarre inspiration including War Dance for Wooden Indians, New Year's Eve in a Haunted House, And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon. The label “jazz”, as it applies to his music, is effective only in describing the instruments in the orchestra.
Scott’s kinetic and, as it were, visual compositions, mostly bi-thematic (as is the case with the most celebrated, Powerhouse), relate loosely to the chamber-music mood of the contemporary small groups led by John Kirby. In fact, Scott would later employ Kirby’s arranger, Charlie Shavers. Other influences added to his melting pot of sound: a taste of the freakish from the “novelty” side of Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, the “futuristic” pieces Don Redman wrote for the Fletcher Henderson band in the Twenties and a fictitous exoticism straight from the Broadway stage. There is even a shade of the plaintive from the “Yiddish swing bands” of the Thirties. All of the above were executed with mechanical precision, with little or no room for improvisation or even swing, if not as quotation.
In 1943 Carl Stalling, music director at Warner Brothers, chose about twelve of these colorful and kinetic miniatures to comment on the hijinks of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck etc. Scott’s music owes its survival, both subliminal and fragmentary, to this interesting choice for cartoon soundtracks. From 1945 on, Scott devoted himself as inventor more than as composer, to the electronic synthesis of sound, a field in which he is an obscure pioneer. His subsequent output (published by Chusid in two CDs) could easily be seen as forerunner to genres such as ambient and techno.
Irwin Chusid’s discovery of Scott’s music was in all likeness written in the stars and happened, with a jolt of recognition on Chusid’s part, almost twenty years ago. This author/producer who authored a study on outsider music (Songs In the Key Of Z, A Cappella Books, 2000) has not only promoted Scott’s music republishing on CD, but has, in essence, created the Raymond Scott Orchestrette. The seven musicians of the Orchestrette were originally part of the twenty-five Chusid gathered in in New York in 1998 on the occasion of a concert of music by Raymond Scott. Chusid asked them not to try in any way to reproduce Scott’s Quintet, but rather to rethink the repertoire, taking all imaginable liberty with the arrangements.
This is exactly what one hears in the RSO’s performances and on their CD «Pushbutton Parfait» (Evolver, 2002). In the contemporary rhythmic pulse of Wayne Barker’s and Will Holshouser’s scores, (the former, sumptuous and neo-lounge , the latter, drier and therefore more faithful to the classic Scott sound) Scott’s music reaffirms its musical and poetic values through recreations whose charms lie mostly in their distance from the originals. Improvisation finds the ample room it was denied in the Quintet sides. Here is RSO’s lineup: Rob Thomas or Sam Bardfeld, violin, Michael Hashim, alto and soprano sax, Brian Dewan, miscellaneous instruments and vocals, George Rush, bass, Clem Waldmann, drums.
The new arrangements capitalize on the instrumentalists’ individual timbres: the opposite of what happened in the Quintet, where musicians were considered machines (and treated as such by Scott, according to Anita O’Day’s recollections). This “contrary” approach has led the Orechstrette to avoid Scott’s more popular hits (Toy Trumpet, Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals) as well as the more onomatopoeic (Bumpy Weather Over newark, Serenade to a Lonesome Railroad Station). What’s astounding are the acoustical renditions of a couple of Scott’s electronic tunes, Little Miss Echo and Bass Line Generator, which also show the composer’s skill in manipulating minimalistic musical ideas.
How do the RSO’s renditions compare to the originals? The general feeling is of a dehydrated music with water added, sometimes a few bubbles and maybe a little colorful umbrella. The extra ingredient is, essentially, the human warmth of an expressively uninhibited execution that might have bugged Raymond Scott. He was a visionary artist but a timid and repressed man, lost in his dreams of a musical sound “ethereal, immaterial, full of space” (from a 1937 interview with Popular Mechanics), in pursuit of which, aided by machinery of his own devising, he would spend the rest of his days.
(Musica Jazz, February 2005)
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• Errata
Irwin Chusid makes some fine points:
• Errata
Irwin Chusid makes some fine points:
From: Irwin Chusid <RaymondScott@musicsales.com>
Date: 2:29 AM
To: Marco Bertoli
There are a few factual errors, which I'll correct for your future
reference:
Scott, born Harold Warnow
He was born "Harry Warnow"
Between 1937 and 1939 his sextet, which he pointedly referred to
as Quintet, recorded many program pieces of bizarre
inspiration including ... And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon
"And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon" was recorded around 1960 by Scott's band
called The Secret Seven.
The seven musicians of the Orchestrette were originally part of the
twenty-five Chusid gathered in in New York in 1998
The Scott tribute concerts took place in 1996 and 1997. We did not have a
concert in 1998.
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