You may not know his name, but if you grew up watching Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies—and really, who didn’t?—you probably know the sometimes frenetic, sometimes jaunty music of Raymond Scott. His compositions were used 140 times in 120 Warner Brothers cartoons and his manic music has inspired countless other projects.
To mark the 110th anniversary of Scott’s birth, music producers, cartoonists, family and fans convened to celebrate the man known as a musical visionary at the first ScottWorks: The Raymond Scott Festival. The all-day symposium in Burbank was attended and moderated by some of the most influential artists in the music and cartoon world, including Grammy-winning producer Hal Willner and one of the most successful cartoonists of all time—Simpsons creator and Malibu resident Matt Groening—who spoke of his reverence for Scott.
“I love all kinds of film music and soundtrack music, from Italian film composers to Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, and Raymond Scott is right up there at the top as a true American maverick and eccentric,” Groening said. “I just love his catchy melodies and one-of-a-kind arrangements.”
Scott, who was born Harry Warnow, was a Julliard-trained musician who got his first big job as the pianist in the CBS Orchestra in its early days. He changed his name to avoid charges of nepotism, since his brother was the band’s leader. Scott left the orchestra soon after forming the Raymond Scott Quintette, which was actually made up of six players. His tunes and their titles were delightfully off beat as well. They include the well-known “Powerhouse,” “New Year’s Eve in a Haunted House,” “Egyptian Barn Dance,” and “Twilight in Turkey.” Scott’s “The Toy Trumpet” was featured in a charming tap dance sequence with Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in the 1938 film “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”
Morgan Neville, the director of the acclaimed films “20 feet from Stardom” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” said, “I used Raymond’s music in the Mr. Rogers film and another. When you’re out of other ideas, Raymond Scott always has something. The diversity of what he did was incredible, but there’s something about the tonality of his music. It doesn’t always fit into the happy/sad bucket. It’s otherworldly.”
At the festival, Scott was remembered as a visionary. He was responsible for breaking the color barrier at CBS radio when, as music director, he insisted on hiring only the best musician for the job, regardless of race. Scott was also credited as a pioneer in the electronic music field. He created hundreds of musical instruments despite the rudimentary vacuum tube and electro-mechanical technology available at the time. After meeting the then-19-year-old Bob Moog, he began a 15-year collaboration with the creator of the Moog synthesizer.
After tinkering, mostly in secret, Scott announced he had invented a futuristic electronic device called the Electronium that was designed to help humans compose music. Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, bought one of only two Electroniums in existence and, in 1971 at the age of 62, Scott was appointed director of electronic music research and development for Motown. There is no evidence that the Electronium actually helped create any specific songs for the hugely successful Motown, but an engineer who worked with the space age-looking “cockpit of dreams” said Michael Jackson was intrigued with it. Gordy ended up giving the machine back to Scott, whose various inventions were used to craft hundreds of commercial jingles. The Electronium is now owned by DEVO founder Mark Mothersbaugh, and electronic music experts and engineers continue to work to unlock its mysterious operation.
Musicologist and radio personality Dr. Demento raved, “I’ve been a big fan of Raymond Scott since I was a little kid. My folks had a 78 of The Boston Pops doing ‘The Toy Trumpet.’ His quintet’s music has been bubbling in my brain ever since, but it was so fabulous to see it all come to life. What a wonderful evening.”
With technology growing at lightning speed today, perhaps Scott’s words in 1949 were not so far-fetched: “Someday, perhaps within the next hundred years, the composer will merely THINK his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brain waves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener.”
