Who was Raymond Scott?

For some, his cultural significance derives from his contribution to early electronic music. A colleague of Robert Moog, Scott is credited with inventing some of the earliest and most sophisticated electronic musical devices such as the Clavivox, one of the earliest synthesizers, and the Electronium, the “instantaneous composer-performance machine.”

Or perhaps Scott’s most significant legacy stems from his commercial success: Warner Brothers bought his Merry Melodies in 1943 to provide the soundtrack for America’s favorite irreverently wacky cartoon characters, such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

But Scott’s contributions to the jazz idiom, which were far more enigmatic and ambiguous, have generally been overlooked. A notorious eccentric and perfectionist, Scott, who lived from 1908 to 1994 and graduated from the Julliard School of Music in 1931, may have been lauded as a worthy composer of modern music, but he also has been dismissed for composing “silly pseudo-jazz.” In 1939 Rhythm magazine declared: “I don’t think that those Scott compositions are sincerely jazz vehicles. Only occasionally do they swing.”

Ironically, Scott’s goal was to revitalize swing, although his methodology seemed counterintuitive: It required that his quintet adhere strictly to the notes and structure of his compositions in a way that straight-jacketed improvisation.
The complexly quirky melodies and rhythms of Scott’s pieces, which he obsessively and meticulously rehearsed, were performed and recorded by his quintet between 1937 and 1939. His style introduced a new creative perspective, what he called “descriptive jazz,” that departed from the jazz norms of the time.

So, what would lead the members of The Monktail Creative Music Concern, a growing cadre of Seattle jazz progressivists comprising several bands, to select this supposedly unimprovisable repertoire for their latest project?
The Raymond Scott Project came about as a result of the chance encounter between John Ewing, Collective member and founder of the improvised music group, Reptet, and Irwin Chusid, the foremost living Raymond Scott scholar. Ewing detailed that meeting over the animated syncopations of his fellow Monktail comrades as they diligently practiced the demanding Scott tunes inside Capitol Hill’s cramped Gallery 1412: “I wanted to use the artwork of the late jazz artist Jim Flora for the cover art for the latest Reptet album, so I got in touch with the guy who was the director of the Flora Archive and Estate. That turned out to be Irwin Chusid.”

Chusid, an eccentric from New York City was not only the archivist for Jim Flora, but also a locally famous radio personality with his long-running free-form radio show on WFMU, and, as Ewing soon discovered, the reigning expert and guardian of the Raymond Scott archives, which included Scott’s musical charts.

After Chusid and Ewing worked together on the Reptet artwork, Chusid broached the topic of a Raymond Scott tribute, for which he proposed that Ewing assemble a band and Chusid fly out to Seattle to speak about Scott and his legacy. Chusid also volunteered to provide Scott’s charts, which, though never notated by Scott himself, were transcribed at the request of his publicist in the 1940s, and had come to rest solely in the hands of Mr. Chusid.

“This is living music,” Chusid told Ewing as he handed over the charts only a few months ago. “Irwin was very adamant about us taking the charts and arranging them and taking liberties with them. He wants it to live in the present time,” Ewing explained. “We could have taken the tunes and played them exactly as they were played on the records in the ’30s and ’40s, but instead we assigned each tune to the different members of the collective who did their own personalized arrangements.”

In this way, Monktail was able to put its own creative stamp on the original songs, composing and arranging more improvised solo sections and even adding some new sections and instrumental parts. They are taking some liberties, but John Seman, who co-founded the Monktail Collective about a decade ago, explains: “In the beginning one of the foremost concerns was remaining true to the composer. But he didn’t have all of this free stuff in the middle of a section; so, is that ok?” Chusid’s relaxed attitude about the music reassured them that it was, so the collective moved forward with the project, diligently practicing the complex charts, internalizing the music, and using new elements to inform their own interpretations of the pieces. As Seman says, “This is the way we can put what we do inside of that music of Raymond Scott.”

Scott’s music lends itself well to this approach in part because, as Ewing says, “people know the melodies because they grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons. It’s almost part of the soundtrack of people’s lives.” The project even has a compelling predecessor. A few years ago, clarinetist Don Byron, in his “Bug Music” album and performances, featured Scott prominently in his celebration-by-adaptation of the music of early composers for film and television cartoons.

If the success of Byron’s project was not encouragement enough, the Monktail collective has the further impetus of being able to look forward to performing this music in the presence of the catalyst for the project and reigning Scott expert, Irwin Chusid. He will deliver a lecture on Raymond Scott at Cornish College in conjunction with Monktail’s project. [Note: this lecture has been cancelled.]

From the history, to the coincidence, to the concept, Monktail’s Raymond Scott Project has evolved from a quirky series of events that seem, now, rather a propos for such an unconventional man of American music. Further, for a group that describes itself as thriving on “the atypical and the exigent; the real weirdo stuff,” performing the work of a man of such unconventional musical genius, with a legacy so memorable yet contestable, will doubtlessly produce an evening of nostalgia, entertainment, and inventive interpretation.