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THE MUSIC OF RAYMOND SCOTT: RECKLESS NIGHTS AND TURKISH TWILIGHTS Four 1/2 Stars

"This big show came in from New York -- Tondelayo and Lopez. They had special music written by Raymond Scott. It was called ‘Powerhouse.' Really impressive stuff -- bomp, bomp, be-doodle-lee-doo-doo-de-lee. All written out. Looked like fly shit on those sheets. It scared the hell out of me." - Art Blakey (quoted in down beat, March 18, 1971), on why he gave up the piano and switched to drums.

Why am I writing about a recording that was released seven years ago?

Well, if I had known about this recording seven years ago, I would have written about it seven years ago. As it is, I am thanking my lucky ducks ... uh, stars ... that I heard it at all.

I saw an ad for "The Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights" in an old copy of The New Yorker (or was it Spy?) a year or two ago. The stylish ad, which featured the CD-cover photograph of Raymond Scott at the piano, touted him as the man who wrote the music for the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. "Hang on," I thought, "wasn't it Carl Stalling who scored the Looney Toons? This can't be right." (I'm a Stalling-grad from way back, see.)

Besides, the black and white photo of Scott looked suspiciously modern; he resembled any number of nouveau lounge-rats with his slicked-down hair, vintage suit and sideways wiseguy grin. "Nah," I grumbled, unable to countenance a pretender to Carl Stalling's throne. "There's no such guy as Raymond Scott. This is just some marketing swifty's idea of a surefire selling angle, probably for some doofus swing-wannabe with a trust fund and a LOT of chutzpah. And, whoa, a hell of a lawyer. How dare they?? Pass."

Talk about your classic ‘toon-snob's state of denial. That split-second snub cost me a wagonload of instant gratification. But better late the epiphany than never.

Browsing through the used CDs at Sound Waves recently, I came across this dad-blamed Raymond Scott . . . THING, in the flesh. (Metaphor translator!) This time, I decided to do a little investigating before walking away and, carrying it to the listening station like I'd carry a dead bug to a wastepaper basket, I slipped the disc into a CD player, tugged on the headphones and pressed PLAY.

And ten seconds into the opening number, "Powerhouse," I was a grinning, jumping, born-again fool for Raymond Scott, the mad genius behind (yes, Virginia) Carl Stalling -- and Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote, the Roadrunner, and a couple of Johnny-come-latelys named Ren and Stimpy. Oh, brothers and sisters, do I ever LIVE for this sort of musical/cultural smack upside the (chowder)head!

Recorded between 1937 and 1939 by the Raymond Scott Quintette under the aegis of the Columbia Broadcasting System, these brief programmatic pieces would seem to have been written specifically for cartoons, yet the CD's liner notes inform us that Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn, New York in 1908), wrote them with little else in mind, apparently, than his own pleasure. In 1941, Warner Brothers licensed Scott's Quintette compositions and, by 1943, Warner Brothers music director Carl Stalling was "sampling" Scott's work in nearly every Merrie Melodies/Looney Toons feature score.

Scott, who graduated from the Institute of Musical Art (later known as the Juilliard School) in 1931, was also an inventor and engineering whiz who reportedly devised, as far back as 1949, one of the first synthesizers, a machine that composed using artificial intelligence. (A year earlier, he had invented "Karloff," a $100,000 sampling device!) Scott also invented the Clavivox, a keyboard designed to simulate the sound of a Theremin but without that devilishly difficult instrument's breaks in pitch.

Inventor, electronic music pioneer, composer, pianist, bandleader -- Raymond Scott, who died in 1994 and whose music we all know without even knowing that we do, is surely one of this century's most underappreciated creative forces. "The Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights" is a terrific introduction to his madcap, virtuosic cartoon classics. The superb liner notes offer a compact, comprehensive history of the man and his accomplishments. (For netheads, the official Raymond Scott website, RaymondScott.com , is a delight too.)

Mr. Scott, wherever you are, sir, I'll bet you still sound like a million ducks . . . BUCKS!

"Powerhouse"/ "The Toy Trumpet"/ "Tobacco Auctioneer"/ "New Year's Eve in a Haunted House"/ "Manhattan Minuet"/ "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals"/ "Reckless Night On Board an Ocean Liner"/ "Moment Musical"/"Twilight in Turkey"/ "The Penguin"/"Oil Gusher"/ "In an 18th Century Drawing Room"/ "The Girl at the Typewriter"/ "Siberian Sleighride"/ "At an Arabian House Party"/ "Boy Scout in Switzerland"/ "Bumpy Weather in Newark"/ "Minuet in Jazz"/ "War Dance for Wooden Indians"/ "The Quintet Plays Carmen"/ "Huckleberry Duck"/ "Peter Tambourine"