Deconstructing Dad -The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott

Raymond Scott is a great musical Powerhouse of the 20th century. In our previous posting we literally looked at Scott's Powerhouse - the inventive jazz work, the staple of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and its entree into 21st century musical vernacular.

After a successful career as the house bandleader on Your Hit Parade, Scott moves to the East Coast and begins a career in electronic music composition. And reveals himself a musical genius on a par with Frank Zappa and an electronic instrument genius on the order of Robert Moog. In fact, Robert Moog saw Raymond Scott's Electronium prototype as a boy. This inspired his own work.

Scott's son Stan Warnow and some chums have put together an amateur film which documents his tortured relationship with his father, his father's glamorous musical career, his father's womanizing, and the sadness at the end of his life that this shining invention would never be completed.



What is interesting about Raymond Scott is that other synthesizer inventors built keyboard-based instruments that could be played by a musician. Raymond Scott's devices were sequencers which actually composed the music they played.

Raymond Scott - Portifino


RAYMOND SCOTT - Cindy Electronium (1959) - Art Monad 144- モナド - 人生の花


And today ex-Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh owns the Electronium Raymond Scott's manufactured for Motown's Barry Gordy. They hope to restore it.

Powerhouse - A Catalogue raisonné of the compositions of Raymond Scott

Powerhouse is a jazz suite in three movements by the American composer Raymond Scott. Due to the nature of Scott's musicality Carl Stalling appropriated Scott's work into his cartoon soundtracks for the Merrie Melodies he was doing at Warner Brothers.

The Raymond Scott Quintette is really the Raymond Scott Sextette. But Scott thought Sextet was vulgar.

Of special interest of this performance in Your Hit Parade is the use of a pair of matched "wobulator" video effects to compliment the live performance. The first is clearly a Lissajous figure which is a type of signal generated by an oscilloscope reacting to the sound frequencies of the audio being performed. The fact that there are three displays indicates some form of studio effect.

In addition, there is the second figure that is almost certainly a dancer wearing a black leotard with white striped fabric highlights. This figure is doubled.

I am prepared to offer the opinion that the Lissajous figure and the dancer were performing in a second studio, and that all this was mixed together, displayed on a video monitor, recorded by a second camera pointed on that monitor, and mixed into the studio feed as broadcast.


Powerhouse performed by Lisa Preimesberger, Philip Everall, Jude Traxler, Andy Kozar and Matthias Kronsteiner live at the weekly Power Concert at Manhattan School of Music


This tube is awesome because you can witness the music being played. Especially the hysterically funny percussion section.

Merrie Melodies powerhouse Feat. Mack and Tosh, the original Ambiguously Gay Duo.

Notice that, while Scott uses trombones and other horns to drive his melody, here Carl Stalling uses a string section. A far more deft handling. Also, and I hate to be pedantic, but Merrie Melodies were musically-driven cartoons. Whereas Looney Tunes were cartoons featuring incidental music.


The "Phil- harmonics"


The very kles-matic work of Raymond Scott


Then finally, Carl Stalling gets an entirely different third movement out of Scott's work with
Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half Century