Raymond Scott Project

From Dream Research Labs  has produced the K.Cox arrangement of Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals, written by Raymond Scott, copyright Music Sales Corps.  It is from the tribute collection of tunes entitled Happy Hour For A Pack of Screaming Monkeys organized and executively produced by David Bagsby around or before 1998.

In 1943 Warner Bros. Studios started sprinkling over 120 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons with Raymond Scott music.  Many people will find these pieces strangely familiar.  More recently, Raymond Scott music has been featured in The Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, Animaniacs, Honey-I Shrunk the Kids, and more.  Here are some linernotes:  Chances are good that you have never heard of Raymond Scott, however, it is likely that you have heard a vast majority of his music. Scott’s musical catalog was licensed by Warner Brothers and used in over 120 cartoons over the years, though his name never appears in any credits. Carl Stalling was their music director who became enthralled with Scott’s output and profusely entwined his tunes into the collective subconscious of anyone who’s been around since the 1930’s. With titles like “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals” and “War Dance for Wooden Indians” it’s easy to see why Stalling was lured in…not to mention that the music is equally as vivid.

Fans of Scott’s music include Stravinsky, Jascha Heifetz, Elvis Costello, Henry Rollins, and many others. Jazz drummer Art Blakey gave up piano and switched to drums when confronted with the score to Scott’s “Powerhouse”. Groups like Kronos Quartet, Rush, They Might Be Giants and Devo have covered or outright stolen his music. One song, “Christmas Night in Harlem”, written in 1934 with lyricist Mitchell Parish (Stardust/Deep Purple), became a hit for Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman.

Raymond Scott’s goal was “to write music people would like the first time they heard it”. Scott felt that for an artist to succeed, you must “temporarily defeat human nature…become temporarily superhuman.” This is evinced in his work and his working methods of never using or allowing scores in performance or rehearsal. All of his music was dictated to the band (CBS Radio Orchestra).

Raymond Scott began his musical career when his brother talked him out of becoming an electrical engineer, bought him a Steinway and sent him to the Institute of Musical Arts, (which later became Julliard). Scott enjoyed national popularity on the radio show “Your Hit Parade”. He hired the first racially mixed radio orchestra. Eventually he returned to electronics. He was the head of Motown’s research & development in the 1970’s and also invented the first artificially intelligent automatic composing machine in 1949…(at least 30 years before algorhythmic composition programs were developed).

Scott, also in 1949, was quoted as saying “perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely THINK his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener.” He was definitely a man well ahead of his time.

Discover more information at RaymondScott.net