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Speaker 1: Pushkin The Last Archive, A History of Truth.

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Speaker 2: About thirty years ago, a man named Irwin choose It

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Speaker 2: encountered one of the strangest machines almost nobody had ever

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Speaker 2: heard of.

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Speaker 3: I was forty, I was broke. It's kind of a

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Speaker 3: professional failure.

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Speaker 2: Choose It was a DJ for a small community radio

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Speaker 2: station in New Jersey. A friend of his had put

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Speaker 2: him on to a musician named Raymond Scott, one of

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Speaker 2: the most famous musicians of the early twentieth century, who

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Speaker 2: had somehow been completely lost to history.

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Speaker 3: These were records that were twenty five cents of pop

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Speaker 3: and used record stores back then, and you didn't They

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Speaker 3: didn't even have him in a bin.

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Speaker 2: They had him under the bins JUSI loved Scott's music,

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Speaker 2: and he began to get drawn into the mystery of

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Speaker 2: it all. Who was this guy? He was obsessed, but

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Speaker 2: his research kept dead ending.

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Speaker 3: I went to a library and went looking through music

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Speaker 3: history books, and there's almost no mention of Raymond Scott.

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Speaker 3: He wasn't in the jazz books, he wasn't in the

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Speaker 3: classical books, he wasn't in the pop books. I was

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Speaker 3: kind of mystify he was kind of a mystery man.

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Speaker 2: He was stuck until his friend found Scott in a

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Speaker 2: phone book. He was still alive, living in California, Jews.

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Speaker 2: It made a phone call and then he got on

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Speaker 2: a plane and flew across the country. By then Scott

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Speaker 2: was in his eighties. He'd had a few strokes and

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Speaker 2: he couldn't speak. He would rest in the back of

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Speaker 2: a dingy old ranch house with the heat turned all

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Speaker 2: the way up and a humidifier on full blast, so

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Speaker 2: there was a kind of heavy fog all around. His

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Speaker 2: wife was taking care of him, but she also kept

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Speaker 2: a lot of stray animals. There was a dog with

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Speaker 2: paralyzed hind legs dragging itself for a and a lifetime's

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Speaker 2: worth of stuff piled everywhere.

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Speaker 3: They were old rusted tape decks. There were wires, They

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Speaker 3: were reels of tape. There were seventy eight r PM discs,

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Speaker 3: many of them broken, some of them on shelves old

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Speaker 3: magazines of electronic industry publications parts catalogs. This is some

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Speaker 3: of them, dating back to the nineteen forties and fifties.

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Speaker 2: I should say this story spooky as it is, it's

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Speaker 2: kind of my dream. I'm been out of Haffrey and

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Speaker 2: I've produced this podcast for the last few years, and

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Speaker 2: I'm hosting a season of six episodes now, which more

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Speaker 2: on that later. All my life, I've written about history

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Speaker 2: and made music. To find a secret, hidden archive full

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Speaker 2: of strange musical electronics. I can imagine almost nothing better

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Speaker 2: to know through artifacts what someone else once knew, something

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Speaker 2: lost because the records and papers and magazines that Choose

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Speaker 2: had found told a story. Scott had been one of

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Speaker 2: the most famous musicians of the twentieth century. He'd been

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Speaker 2: on TV every week for a long time, in all

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Speaker 2: the big magazines and films with the movie stars, but

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Speaker 2: almost nobody remembered him now.

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Speaker 3: And I saw Raymond's entire life's work spread out between

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Speaker 3: a leaky guest shed, a garage, some outbuildings on the

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Speaker 3: property in Van NY's.

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Speaker 2: How could somebody so famous be so forgotten? But something

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Speaker 2: else didn't make sense either. There are all these old

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Speaker 2: machines and tools strewn about with the rusty edges, And

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Speaker 2: in the corner of the guest shed covered in dust,

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Speaker 2: Choose It saw a huge hunk of metal and cased

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Speaker 2: in wood.

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Speaker 3: Large dusty piece of furniture, a bit like a wooden console.

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Speaker 2: But it wasn't furniture. It was a heavy machine with

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Speaker 2: wires spilling out, hundreds of switches on a black metal front,

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Speaker 2: and wood paneling all around. It looked like the cockpit

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Speaker 2: of an airplane, except that some of the switches and

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Speaker 2: buttons said things like record and power, and others said

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Speaker 2: things like do wa.

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Speaker 3: I didn't know what it was.

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Speaker 2: Later on, someone helping to sort through Scott's files found

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Speaker 2: a contract. It was between Raymond Scott and Motown Records,

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Speaker 2: and it detailed a binding, confidential agreement to build that

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Speaker 2: machine that choose. It was staring at a machine that

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Speaker 2: was meant to write songs, the Electronium Choose. It had

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Speaker 2: come out to California because of these twenty five cent

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Speaker 2: records he'd gotten obsessed with. It was honestly pretty random,

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Speaker 2: but somehow he'd stumbled on one of the strangest stories

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Speaker 2: in the history of technology.

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Speaker 4: How did it work?

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Speaker 2: That's the voice of Brian Keihu, one time keyboardist for

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Speaker 2: The Who, Fiona Apple, producer, Beatles historian, and one of

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Speaker 2: the people for whom this machine has become now a

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Speaker 2: kind of holy grail because it makes no sense. Raymond

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Speaker 2: Scott began building this thing in the nineteen fifties, and

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Speaker 2: it was a kind of mechanical early artificial intelligence that

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Speaker 2: actually worked. We're freaked out about chat GPT now. This

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Speaker 2: thing was built in secret at a major studio in

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Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies. Michael Jackson used to watch it work,

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Speaker 2: and nobody now can figure out how to get it

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Speaker 2: to work again. In the years between chooses stumbling upon

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Speaker 2: the electronium in that Rundown ranch house, and today a

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Speaker 2: lot of people have gotten involved in preserving the machine.

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Speaker 2: We're bringing it back to life in some fashion. Brian Keyhu,

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Speaker 2: but also Mark Mothersbaugh, the lead singer of Devo gat

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Speaker 2: Ye the pop star, and teams of engineers and programmers

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Speaker 2: and musicians from all around the world because it turns

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Speaker 2: out that the man behind it knew how to make

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Speaker 2: music like no one else, and they want to hear

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Speaker 2: it again. Welcome to Season four of The Last Archive,

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Speaker 2: the show about how we know what we know, how

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Speaker 2: we used to know things, and why it seems sometimes

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Speaker 2: lately is if we don't know anything at all. This

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Speaker 2: episode is about that machine and its inventor, Raymond Scott,

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Speaker 2: not just because Scott is the most famous composer of

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Speaker 2: the twentieth century that most people have never heard of,

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Speaker 2: But because I think his life traces one of the

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Speaker 2: biggest stories about truth in our world today, the attempt

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Speaker 2: to define the difference between man and machine.

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Speaker 5: Remarks before Harrison's down, he is now setting down.

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Speaker 2: There's another reason I want to spend some time with Scott.

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Speaker 5: He is making himself comfortable.

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Speaker 2: He recorded his whole life and begin there he goes,

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Speaker 2: which made for some fun research.

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Speaker 5: At all.

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Speaker 2: Raymond Scott was born in Brooklyn in nineteen oh eight.

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Speaker 2: His parents named him Harry Warno. His father had sailed

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Speaker 2: from Russia to New York two years earlier on a

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Speaker 2: ship called America. Sometime after Scott was born, his parents

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Speaker 2: bought a music store in Brooklyn in Brownsville, a small

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Speaker 2: Jewish neighborhood. They lived in the two floor apartment above

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Speaker 2: their shop, surrounded by music and sound machines. Scott especially

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Speaker 2: loved the phone. Sometimes he'd make prank calls.

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Speaker 5: Please don't forget.

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Speaker 2: Scott was growing up in an in between time, a

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Speaker 2: mismatch of the world we know now. In the world

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Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century, the electrified subway was brand new

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Speaker 2: then the year Scott was born. It had made its

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Speaker 2: way out to Brooklyn, but the gas street lamps in

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Speaker 2: Brownsville were still lit every night by a lamplighter. There

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Speaker 2: were chickens in the street, the smell of the sea

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Speaker 2: out over Canarsi, candy shops and tenements, hot spiced corn,

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Speaker 2: beef in the Delis Briany, half sour pickles in the

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Speaker 2: Jewish market, farms in Saltwater. It felt like the old country.

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Speaker 2: It felt like the ends of the earth.

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Speaker 6: It was a lack a little village. It was a neighborhood.

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Speaker 2: Pearls Imni Winters one of the girls from the neighborhood.

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Speaker 2: Later on she and Scott got married, and she's all

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Speaker 2: over Scott's recordings. Jus It, who never got over his

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Speaker 2: obsession with Raymond Scott, interviewed her with a colleague just

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Speaker 2: a little before she died.

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Speaker 6: I used to go into the music store, you know,

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Speaker 6: to buy music when I was a kid.

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Speaker 2: That music shop is where I think the dream of

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Speaker 2: the songwriting machine began. It was a snapshot of everything

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Speaker 2: that was changing in music in the early nineteen hundreds.

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Speaker 2: For centuries. If you wanted to hear music in your house,

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Speaker 2: someone in your family needed to know how to play.

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Speaker 2: For a while, buying a song meant buying sheet music

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Speaker 2: bound together in little pamphlets. But later in the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 2: technologies that could capture in he produced sound were invented,

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Speaker 2: and by the start of the twentieth century, mechanical music

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Speaker 2: was taking off. Suddenly you didn't need to know somebody

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Speaker 2: who could play to listen to music. You could listen

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Speaker 2: on records, wax cylinders, the radio. Scott was obsessed with

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Speaker 2: these machines and the music that came out of them.

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Speaker 2: He even started an amateur home radio station so he

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Speaker 2: could make broadcasts from his bedroom to the living room.

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Speaker 6: You need to tell me that's recording now, Oh my god,

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Speaker 6: what the fuck that?

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Speaker 2: Even as a kid, he was always working on something.

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Speaker 2: He'd dangled microphones out the window to record conversations on

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Speaker 2: the street or the neighbor. Practicing piano, he would hang

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Speaker 2: around the music shop with his dad, tinkering and watching

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Speaker 2: not just how music was made, but how it was sold,

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Speaker 2: what sold, and how it got reproduced. And there was

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Speaker 2: one machine in particular that he became fascinated by.

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Speaker 6: He told me that he taught himself to play the piano.

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Speaker 6: With the play a piano and I guess that's as

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Speaker 6: he first started.

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Speaker 2: The player piano. You've probably seen one before in a

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Speaker 2: saloon in an old Western, you know, when someone gets shot,

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Speaker 2: falls on the piano and it starts playing itself. That's

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Speaker 2: the player piano, a piano that plays as if there

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Speaker 2: were a ghost of the keyboard. Songs were sold as

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Speaker 2: scrolls of paper with little holes punched out for each note,

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Speaker 2: a set of mechanical instructions for the piano. The result

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Speaker 2: you could hear nearly any song in your home, even

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Speaker 2: if you had no idea how to play it yourself.

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Speaker 2: Scott loved the piano in the shop. He'd take a

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Speaker 2: role and probably play it as slowly as possible, fitting

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Speaker 2: his little fingers to the keys as they press themselves down,

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Speaker 2: learning by machine. Most people these days think of the

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Speaker 2: player piano as a novelty or a gimmick. But I

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Speaker 2: want to spend a minute with it here because it's

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Speaker 2: a big part not just of music history, but of

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Speaker 2: automation history. We tend to think of automation as man

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Speaker 2: versus robot factory lines and coal mines, but the player

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Speaker 2: piano was a kind of robot two one We often

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Speaker 2: forget about but an early, massively influential one that foreshadowed

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Speaker 2: so much of what was to come. When Scott was

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Speaker 2: a kid, people thought the player piano would be the

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Speaker 2: future of music. There were hundreds of thousands of them

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Speaker 2: sold each year in millions of song roles. By nineteen nineteen,

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Speaker 2: when Scott was eleven, there were more player pianos being

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Speaker 2: sold than regular pianos. It wasn't just sales, though. Copyright

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Speaker 2: laws in the United States were built around the player

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Speaker 2: piano and the record player an equal part. You can

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Speaker 2: draw a straight line from player piano roles to punch

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Speaker 2: cards and the first computer programs, and people made all

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Speaker 2: kinds of player pianos. What you're listening to now is

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Speaker 2: a special kind of player piano role that could capture

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Speaker 2: all the subtleties of a human performance. This one was

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Speaker 2: recorded by the composer WC and reproduced decades after or

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Speaker 2: his death. By machine, That's what Scott was learning in

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Speaker 2: his family's music shop, role by role, not just to

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Speaker 2: play like a machine, but to wonder at all the

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Speaker 2: magical things machines suddenly could do. When I was trying

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Speaker 2: to understand how Scott grew up, I read up on

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Speaker 2: his neighborhood, and in one memoir I found a particular

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Speaker 2: detail that snapped it all into view. The drug store

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Speaker 2: just down the street from Scott had a poster in

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Speaker 2: the window. It was titled the Human Factory, and it

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Speaker 2: imagined a person as if they were a kind of

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Speaker 2: complex machine, with all these little engineers inside. Scott must

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Speaker 2: have passed that poster plenty of times. He had dreams

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Speaker 2: of becoming like a machine himself, attaching motors to his

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00:12:57,075 --> 00:12:59,515
Speaker 2: hands so he could play the piano faster, the kind

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00:12:59,555 --> 00:13:03,875
Speaker 2: of way only a player piano could. Everywhere that line

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00:13:03,875 --> 00:13:09,235
Speaker 2: between man and machine was beginning to blur, but there

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Speaker 2: was one place where the difference was unmistakable. A machine

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00:13:13,395 --> 00:13:17,875
Speaker 2: never made mistakes. The song sounded the same every single time,

225
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Speaker 2: and to Scott, that was the ideal.

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Speaker 6: The struggle between being a musician and an engineer was

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Speaker 6: very real for him. He just loved equipment. Mock was

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00:13:31,715 --> 00:13:35,195
Speaker 6: the one insisted that he go to Julia. I don't

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Speaker 6: think he wanted to.

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Speaker 2: That choice, music or engineering. It set the chorus for

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Speaker 2: Scott's entire life. Because Scott never could give up on engineering.

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Speaker 2: But his brother, who was a rising star in music,

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Speaker 2: saw that he had a gift for composing that almost

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00:13:51,555 --> 00:13:54,315
Speaker 2: no one else did. He got Scott a job as

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Speaker 2: the pianist for the CBS Radio Orchestra, and immediately Scott

236
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Speaker 2: began to get noticed. He was anxious that people would

237
00:14:00,755 --> 00:14:02,675
Speaker 2: think he only had the job because of his brother,

238
00:14:03,155 --> 00:14:06,355
Speaker 2: So Harry Warno flipped through the phone book until he

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Speaker 2: found a name he liked, Raymond Scott, a name he

240
00:14:09,515 --> 00:14:12,595
Speaker 2: also chose because it sounded less Jewish and he was

241
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Speaker 2: always anxious about that. He played his piano, he wrote

242
00:14:16,395 --> 00:14:19,795
Speaker 2: his songs, and he kept his engineering passion more as

243
00:14:19,835 --> 00:14:24,275
Speaker 2: a hobby. CBS was a good situation except for one thing.

244
00:14:25,155 --> 00:14:28,435
Speaker 2: He was always playing standards songs that people knew they

245
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Speaker 2: liked and had heard a million times already.

246
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Speaker 3: He said that he wanted to write music that people

247
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Speaker 3: would like the first time they heard it. He asked

248
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Speaker 3: his brother Mark if he could put together a band.

249
00:14:40,275 --> 00:14:42,355
Speaker 3: He wanted to put together a six piece band with

250
00:14:42,435 --> 00:14:43,275
Speaker 3: himself in it.

251
00:14:46,475 --> 00:14:50,035
Speaker 2: Mark said yes. Scott started hunting for five musicians who

252
00:14:50,035 --> 00:14:53,115
Speaker 2: could do exactly what he wanted. What he wanted was

253
00:14:53,195 --> 00:14:55,715
Speaker 2: music with a spark that could form a connection with

254
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Speaker 2: a listener immediately out of nowhere. He had a couple

255
00:14:58,875 --> 00:15:02,275
Speaker 2: songs ready, so he found his guys rehearsed, and then

256
00:15:02,275 --> 00:15:05,995
Speaker 2: he got an audience together in CBS's Studio B. They

257
00:15:05,995 --> 00:15:09,315
Speaker 2: dimmed the lights all the way and they began to play.

258
00:15:11,555 --> 00:15:13,355
Speaker 2: A journalist wrote about it a year later.

259
00:15:14,435 --> 00:15:17,595
Speaker 4: Nobody who attended that premiere eighteen months ago was likely

260
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Speaker 4: to forget it.

261
00:15:18,755 --> 00:15:20,395
Speaker 7: Out of the darkness, there came.

262
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Speaker 2: A thin wailing note, barely masking a slow, suggestive thumping

263
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Speaker 2: on the drums.

264
00:15:26,795 --> 00:15:28,555
Speaker 7: When it was over, the audience rose.

265
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Speaker 3: To its feet and cheered.

266
00:15:30,115 --> 00:15:33,395
Speaker 7: Fan Mail poured in, Who was this man, Scott?

267
00:15:33,555 --> 00:15:34,635
Speaker 6: Where was he from?

268
00:15:34,995 --> 00:15:37,115
Speaker 7: Where had he been all these years?

269
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Speaker 3: They created such a generated such an amazing listener reaction

270
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Speaker 3: that they immediately got a recording contract with the Master label,

271
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Speaker 3: which was owned by Irving Mills, who was Duke Ellington's manager.

272
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Speaker 2: The response was unprecedented, and admitted.

273
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Speaker 8: I'm going to take you right on in, but we're

274
00:16:00,235 --> 00:16:02,035
Speaker 8: going to have a very entertaining visit with one of

275
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Speaker 8: the years.

276
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Speaker 9: Then faith no music or good doing to get in there.

277
00:16:05,155 --> 00:16:08,435
Speaker 2: Scott was trying to sell a perfect musical package. He

278
00:16:08,515 --> 00:16:10,955
Speaker 2: said he went out to clubs to track which tempos

279
00:16:10,995 --> 00:16:13,475
Speaker 2: made people get up and dance. He had a whole

280
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Speaker 2: thing about names. He called his band of six people

281
00:16:16,435 --> 00:16:20,755
Speaker 2: a quintet, not a sextet. He even renamed his saxophone player.

282
00:16:20,835 --> 00:16:22,195
Speaker 5: And hears the youngest of all group.

283
00:16:22,435 --> 00:16:25,075
Speaker 9: His name was originally Dave Harris, but now it's Eric

284
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Speaker 9: Hoek Eric Kwak.

285
00:16:26,435 --> 00:16:27,515
Speaker 10: Then it's an interesting name.

286
00:16:27,755 --> 00:16:29,355
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's Raymond's idea of a name.

287
00:16:30,315 --> 00:16:32,555
Speaker 2: He wouldn't write his music down. He'd just play it

288
00:16:32,595 --> 00:16:34,675
Speaker 2: at the piano for his quintet and then have them

289
00:16:34,675 --> 00:16:36,515
Speaker 2: play their parts back till they could do it right,

290
00:16:37,115 --> 00:16:37,995
Speaker 2: note for note.

291
00:16:38,195 --> 00:16:40,595
Speaker 5: And they called the fellows that marvelous fears and memories.

292
00:16:40,635 --> 00:16:42,875
Speaker 5: And they never to get a composition to Wednesday signed it.

293
00:16:43,515 --> 00:16:46,235
Speaker 2: Once they had it down, it rarely changed. And that

294
00:16:46,475 --> 00:16:48,875
Speaker 2: was just how Scott wanted it. If he could have

295
00:16:48,915 --> 00:16:51,955
Speaker 2: replaced each of his musicians' minds with the scroll of music,

296
00:16:52,395 --> 00:16:53,355
Speaker 2: he probably would have.

297
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Speaker 6: He didn't know how to handle human relationships too well.

298
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Speaker 3: They called him a bully, they called him a bastard,

299
00:17:03,515 --> 00:17:05,995
Speaker 3: they called him all kinds of names because he was

300
00:17:06,195 --> 00:17:09,355
Speaker 3: trying to make them play better. One of his musicians

301
00:17:09,475 --> 00:17:14,195
Speaker 3: once nobody worked with Raymond. Everybody worked under Raymond. Johnny Williams,

302
00:17:14,195 --> 00:17:16,795
Speaker 3: the drummer, said, we were We hated every minute of

303
00:17:16,835 --> 00:17:19,115
Speaker 3: it because we were being told what to play exaid.

304
00:17:19,155 --> 00:17:21,195
Speaker 3: At the same time that we hated it, we were

305
00:17:21,195 --> 00:17:22,955
Speaker 3: making more money than anybody in town.

306
00:17:23,835 --> 00:17:26,715
Speaker 2: The music was like jazz, but without the improvisation or

307
00:17:26,755 --> 00:17:31,115
Speaker 2: the looseness. Tightly manage the price of mechanical perfection.

308
00:17:31,635 --> 00:17:38,435
Speaker 3: Well, he rehearsed, I want to cut that, and he rehearsed.

309
00:17:38,155 --> 00:17:39,795
Speaker 9: Keepon cutting way the anper the cut.

310
00:17:39,955 --> 00:17:41,115
Speaker 3: He rehearsed keepers from.

311
00:17:40,955 --> 00:17:43,195
Speaker 9: Getting accocated by saying, temple do it that way without

312
00:17:43,195 --> 00:17:43,795
Speaker 9: talking about it.

313
00:17:43,795 --> 00:17:46,675
Speaker 3: And he was driving his musicians crazy because they would say,

314
00:17:46,875 --> 00:17:48,915
Speaker 3: nobody needs to rehearse this much.

315
00:17:52,035 --> 00:17:55,795
Speaker 2: Scott held his musicians to an impossible standard. He wanted

316
00:17:55,835 --> 00:17:59,115
Speaker 2: them to play like machines. But it's hard to argue

317
00:17:59,115 --> 00:18:03,875
Speaker 2: with the results. His rise was stratospheric. Stravinsky, Cab Calloway,

318
00:18:03,955 --> 00:18:07,235
Speaker 2: Duke Ellington, they were all Raymond Scott fans. In the

319
00:18:07,275 --> 00:18:10,515
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, he had his own radio show, The Raymond

320
00:18:10,555 --> 00:18:14,075
Speaker 2: Scott Show. He became the music director of CBS Radio,

321
00:18:14,595 --> 00:18:18,475
Speaker 2: where he led a racially integrated radio orchestra. This, I

322
00:18:18,515 --> 00:18:22,035
Speaker 2: think not because he was especially progressive but because all

323
00:18:22,035 --> 00:18:23,515
Speaker 2: he cared about was the music.

324
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Speaker 3: This, in so many ways explains why he was working

325
00:18:26,995 --> 00:18:28,555
Speaker 3: with machines late in life.

326
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Speaker 6: Oh yeah, his best friend.

327
00:18:32,155 --> 00:18:33,955
Speaker 2: The machines were his best friends.

328
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Speaker 10: To me.

329
00:18:35,395 --> 00:18:38,155
Speaker 2: When I heard this story, I kept thinking about Scott

330
00:18:38,195 --> 00:18:41,355
Speaker 2: as a kid at the player piano. When that machine

331
00:18:41,435 --> 00:18:45,355
Speaker 2: was invented, it scared people. Two years before Raymond Scott

332
00:18:45,435 --> 00:18:48,915
Speaker 2: was born, John Phillips Sussa, the famous composer, wrote an

333
00:18:48,995 --> 00:18:52,835
Speaker 2: essay called the Menace of Mechanical Music. The whole course

334
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Speaker 2: of music has been the expression of soul, states he wrote.

335
00:18:56,195 --> 00:18:58,555
Speaker 2: And now in this twentieth century come these talking and

336
00:18:58,595 --> 00:19:02,555
Speaker 2: playing machines to reduce the expression to a mathematical system

337
00:19:02,635 --> 00:19:06,315
Speaker 2: of megaphones, wheels, cogs, discs, cylinders, in all manner of

338
00:19:06,355 --> 00:19:10,195
Speaker 2: revolving things. The player piano became a dark sny of

339
00:19:10,195 --> 00:19:13,635
Speaker 2: modern life. When Kurt Vonnegut wrote his first novel about

340
00:19:13,635 --> 00:19:17,195
Speaker 2: a dystopian America run by engineers in their automatic machinery,

341
00:19:17,555 --> 00:19:22,275
Speaker 2: he called it player piano. By the time Raymond Scott

342
00:19:22,315 --> 00:19:26,795
Speaker 2: was getting famous, those fears about mechanical music were everywhere.

343
00:19:27,275 --> 00:19:36,195
Speaker 9: Same story everywhere, new machine, high speed production, fewer jobs.

344
00:19:34,995 --> 00:19:36,715
Speaker 11: And ten men for every job it.

345
00:19:36,675 --> 00:19:37,395
Speaker 10: Can be had.

346
00:19:38,115 --> 00:19:42,995
Speaker 2: Scott was fighting a classic battle, mechanical perfection against human error.

347
00:19:43,515 --> 00:19:47,395
Speaker 2: What was at stake were free will agency the human soul.

348
00:19:48,355 --> 00:19:50,995
Speaker 2: That conflict was one of the main rhythms of twentieth

349
00:19:50,995 --> 00:19:54,555
Speaker 2: century history, and Scott was like a leading melody and

350
00:19:54,595 --> 00:19:59,875
Speaker 2: then he hit a wrong note. That story. After the

351
00:19:59,915 --> 00:20:07,635
Speaker 2: break in the nineteen forties, Raymond Scott was properly famous.

352
00:20:08,235 --> 00:20:10,115
Speaker 2: He and his wife Pearl packed up their kids and

353
00:20:10,195 --> 00:20:12,995
Speaker 2: his equipment and moved to a big house out in Tuckaho,

354
00:20:13,115 --> 00:20:13,515
Speaker 2: New York.

355
00:20:13,995 --> 00:20:16,755
Speaker 6: He had a wonderful apartment and said he fully moved

356
00:20:16,795 --> 00:20:20,715
Speaker 6: from there. Of course, he was a Ham radio operator.

357
00:20:21,435 --> 00:20:23,635
Speaker 6: He wanted to be where he'd have good reception.

358
00:20:24,475 --> 00:20:26,955
Speaker 2: I kind of love that he finally had enough money

359
00:20:26,955 --> 00:20:29,075
Speaker 2: to buy a big house. But actually the only reason

360
00:20:29,115 --> 00:20:30,875
Speaker 2: he was moving out of the city was so that

361
00:20:30,915 --> 00:20:34,435
Speaker 2: he could have better Ham radio reception. He was tinkering

362
00:20:34,475 --> 00:20:38,195
Speaker 2: with his machines again, not just microphones in high fi equipment,

363
00:20:38,315 --> 00:20:41,675
Speaker 2: but new sorts of instruments. The problem was, electronics was

364
00:20:41,715 --> 00:20:44,195
Speaker 2: not a casual hobby. In the late nineteen thirties and

365
00:20:44,235 --> 00:20:44,995
Speaker 2: early forties.

366
00:20:45,715 --> 00:20:48,395
Speaker 12: He saw an electronic parts catalog and he wanted to

367
00:20:48,515 --> 00:20:50,195
Speaker 12: order every part in the catalog.

368
00:20:50,955 --> 00:20:54,555
Speaker 2: Stan Warno is Raymond Scott and pearls Imni Winter's son.

369
00:20:55,235 --> 00:20:58,875
Speaker 2: He made a great documentary about his father called Deconstructing Dad.

370
00:20:59,275 --> 00:21:00,875
Speaker 2: I visited him last winter.

371
00:21:01,035 --> 00:21:02,595
Speaker 12: And he thought, the only way he's going to make

372
00:21:02,675 --> 00:21:05,515
Speaker 12: enough money to do that is to form a big band.

373
00:21:05,915 --> 00:21:07,595
Speaker 12: And so he did form a big band and went

374
00:21:07,635 --> 00:21:08,315
Speaker 12: out on the road.

375
00:21:10,995 --> 00:21:14,075
Speaker 8: It's more thirty in New York and time for CBS

376
00:21:14,115 --> 00:21:17,515
Speaker 8: to present The Raymond Scott Show across the continent and

377
00:21:17,595 --> 00:21:20,875
Speaker 8: later to the whole world by shortwave come song Hits

378
00:21:20,875 --> 00:21:24,475
Speaker 8: of the Day, starring America's number one composer with a band.

379
00:21:24,915 --> 00:21:26,635
Speaker 8: Here he is Raymond Scott.

380
00:21:28,715 --> 00:21:31,115
Speaker 2: In the nineteen thirties, Scott's hits seem to have been

381
00:21:31,155 --> 00:21:34,675
Speaker 2: about the music first, but in the forties his focus

382
00:21:34,675 --> 00:21:37,635
Speaker 2: seems to have shifted from writing great songs to making

383
00:21:37,675 --> 00:21:40,275
Speaker 2: as much money from his music as possible so he

384
00:21:40,275 --> 00:21:43,395
Speaker 2: could fuel his mechanical hobby. It was like his own

385
00:21:43,515 --> 00:21:46,435
Speaker 2: version of his dad's music shop. Music sold any way

386
00:21:46,475 --> 00:21:49,755
Speaker 2: you like, but a big band needed a singer. He

387
00:21:49,835 --> 00:21:52,395
Speaker 2: was always churning through them, always on the lookout for

388
00:21:52,475 --> 00:21:56,555
Speaker 2: someone perfect. And that's how he met Marjorie Chandler.

389
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Speaker 6: We were in Chicago and we took an apartment there.

390
00:22:02,315 --> 00:22:04,675
Speaker 2: Scott heard through one of the band's managers that there

391
00:22:04,715 --> 00:22:07,315
Speaker 2: was a young girl from Canada he should meet. She'd

392
00:22:07,315 --> 00:22:10,115
Speaker 2: sung in a big radio contest in one first place.

393
00:22:10,675 --> 00:22:13,315
Speaker 2: She was about thirteen years old, and her voice was amazing.

394
00:22:14,115 --> 00:22:17,555
Speaker 2: Scott decided to take her on as a student full time.

395
00:22:18,315 --> 00:22:24,315
Speaker 12: He thought she had real potential, and so she came

396
00:22:24,475 --> 00:22:26,395
Speaker 12: to live with us.

397
00:22:26,395 --> 00:22:29,315
Speaker 2: Marjorie's family sent her to live at the house in Tuckahoe.

398
00:22:29,795 --> 00:22:32,915
Speaker 2: According to Pearl, she and Scott were like surrogate parents,

399
00:22:33,395 --> 00:22:38,115
Speaker 2: except Scott and Marjorie spent endless hours practicing. It was

400
00:22:38,155 --> 00:22:41,875
Speaker 2: like with his quintete, except Chandler was a kid away

401
00:22:41,875 --> 00:22:45,315
Speaker 2: from her parents. This tape is likely from later on,

402
00:22:45,875 --> 00:22:48,555
Speaker 2: but even then you can hear how exacting he is.

403
00:22:51,635 --> 00:22:57,395
Speaker 6: This guys.

404
00:22:58,395 --> 00:22:59,555
Speaker 5: Even very much.

405
00:22:59,555 --> 00:23:00,915
Speaker 6: You think.

406
00:23:05,795 --> 00:23:10,115
Speaker 2: Scott gave her a new name, Dorothy Collins. She'd go

407
00:23:10,155 --> 00:23:12,875
Speaker 2: to school, she'd wander around the big house and write

408
00:23:12,875 --> 00:23:16,995
Speaker 2: her name Marjorie over and over again. Then she'd go

409
00:23:17,075 --> 00:23:27,515
Speaker 2: back to practicing love. It was a backbreaking regimen, but

410
00:23:27,555 --> 00:23:29,155
Speaker 2: she was an incredible.

411
00:23:28,635 --> 00:23:35,395
Speaker 12: Talent, and as she got older and better, he began

412
00:23:35,675 --> 00:23:37,355
Speaker 12: featuring her and his band.

413
00:23:38,435 --> 00:23:40,915
Speaker 2: She grew up with the family. When she was a

414
00:23:40,915 --> 00:23:42,955
Speaker 2: bit older, she sang with the band for the first

415
00:23:42,995 --> 00:23:46,355
Speaker 2: time on the air. After Scott started hosting The Lucky

416
00:23:46,355 --> 00:23:49,635
Speaker 2: Strike Hit Parade, a popular TV show, she became the

417
00:23:49,675 --> 00:23:53,435
Speaker 2: featured singer. She was twenty four, and at some point

418
00:23:53,475 --> 00:23:55,835
Speaker 2: along the way they got romantically involved.

419
00:23:56,515 --> 00:23:59,715
Speaker 12: And then I have seen some letters where my mother

420
00:23:59,955 --> 00:24:03,955
Speaker 12: was writing to him saying it's really I'm not really

421
00:24:03,995 --> 00:24:06,595
Speaker 12: comfortable with her, and who knows what was going on,

422
00:24:06,795 --> 00:24:11,555
Speaker 12: because again that they eventually got involved with each other

423
00:24:11,875 --> 00:24:15,635
Speaker 12: and he'd have wasted my mom and married her.

424
00:24:16,835 --> 00:24:20,155
Speaker 2: Scott and Marjorie now Dorothy Collins were married when she

425
00:24:20,235 --> 00:24:23,555
Speaker 2: was twenty five. I don't want to dramatize this or

426
00:24:23,595 --> 00:24:26,475
Speaker 2: speculate on how and when they got together, because no

427
00:24:26,555 --> 00:24:29,355
Speaker 2: matter what, it's a dark turn. She had been like

428
00:24:29,395 --> 00:24:32,195
Speaker 2: an adopted daughter to them, away from her own parents.

429
00:24:33,035 --> 00:24:35,995
Speaker 2: It was the culmination, I think of the most dangerous

430
00:24:35,995 --> 00:24:39,555
Speaker 2: strain in Scott's thinking about musicians and people. What he

431
00:24:39,635 --> 00:24:42,595
Speaker 2: must have seen in Marjorie Chandler in the beginning was

432
00:24:42,635 --> 00:24:47,035
Speaker 2: Dorothy Collins the chance to make his own musician, his

433
00:24:47,075 --> 00:24:54,395
Speaker 2: own person as if he were building a machine. Every

434
00:24:54,395 --> 00:24:57,875
Speaker 2: week they appeared on TV together. Collins became a kind

435
00:24:57,915 --> 00:25:01,835
Speaker 2: of American darling, achieving a level of celebrity even Scott

436
00:25:01,835 --> 00:25:05,715
Speaker 2: had never had a star. The money came pouring in.

437
00:25:06,595 --> 00:25:08,835
Speaker 2: They moved into a mansion on Long Island.

438
00:25:09,915 --> 00:25:12,955
Speaker 7: It had thirty two rooms and four stories.

439
00:25:14,115 --> 00:25:19,235
Speaker 2: That's deb Studebaker, Raymond Scott and Dorothy Collins's daughter. She's

440
00:25:19,275 --> 00:25:21,755
Speaker 2: a teacher and a poet, which you can hear by

441
00:25:21,795 --> 00:25:23,515
Speaker 2: the way she describes her childhood home.

442
00:25:25,195 --> 00:25:27,835
Speaker 7: The house was at the end of a long gravel driveway.

443
00:25:28,755 --> 00:25:33,395
Speaker 7: It had had a forest behind. It was very grand.

444
00:25:34,155 --> 00:25:38,915
Speaker 7: There was a library with a secret door you pull

445
00:25:38,915 --> 00:25:41,475
Speaker 7: it out. There was a bathroom behind it. We would

446
00:25:41,475 --> 00:25:46,195
Speaker 7: go on these explorations in the forest. There was wisteria

447
00:25:46,435 --> 00:25:50,755
Speaker 7: hanging over an archway that was always filled with bees.

448
00:25:51,915 --> 00:25:54,875
Speaker 2: Inside the house, Scott had begun to amass all the

449
00:25:54,915 --> 00:25:58,315
Speaker 2: electronic parts he wanted. He was at once secretive and

450
00:25:58,435 --> 00:25:59,395
Speaker 2: proud to show it off.

451
00:26:00,275 --> 00:26:02,075
Speaker 9: Let me take it down stairs. I'm sure you these

452
00:26:02,115 --> 00:26:06,595
Speaker 9: technical facilities, and I take it. We're supposed to have, oh,

453
00:26:06,915 --> 00:26:09,115
Speaker 9: maybe a half a million separate items or so an

454
00:26:09,155 --> 00:26:12,155
Speaker 9: electronic music studio wants to grow and grow, and grow

455
00:26:12,195 --> 00:26:12,595
Speaker 9: and grow.

456
00:26:13,275 --> 00:26:17,475
Speaker 2: The room was full of gear, switches, meters, welders, a furnace.

457
00:26:18,035 --> 00:26:19,995
Speaker 9: But now I'd like to take upstairs to show you

458
00:26:20,035 --> 00:26:22,195
Speaker 9: what we've been building with all this equipment.

459
00:26:23,795 --> 00:26:28,275
Speaker 2: Upstairs was a thirty foot wall of obscure electronic musical machinery.

460
00:26:29,115 --> 00:26:32,075
Speaker 2: Alongside his other musical work, Scott had begun writing and

461
00:26:32,155 --> 00:26:37,595
Speaker 2: recording music for commercials. I have for several months now

462
00:26:37,675 --> 00:26:39,835
Speaker 2: been unable to get this jingle for Sprite out of

463
00:26:39,875 --> 00:26:42,875
Speaker 2: my head. Over the course of the nineteen fifties, Scott

464
00:26:42,915 --> 00:26:47,035
Speaker 2: wrote jingles for a lot of big companies schlitzpier Rca, Victor,

465
00:26:47,155 --> 00:26:50,395
Speaker 2: vix Ford, Chrysler, and a lot of the time it

466
00:26:50,435 --> 00:26:53,395
Speaker 2: was Dorothy Collins singing them. He had a plaque over

467
00:26:53,435 --> 00:26:56,475
Speaker 2: his piano that read, ideally the words should make sense.

468
00:26:57,155 --> 00:27:00,595
Speaker 5: What Nicks and Now about dance a melon balladunce a

469
00:27:00,675 --> 00:27:01,635
Speaker 5: melon bad dance?

470
00:27:01,835 --> 00:27:03,955
Speaker 3: What Nicks and Nolan bout dance?

471
00:27:04,115 --> 00:27:04,915
Speaker 2: The ice art.

472
00:27:04,835 --> 00:27:05,675
Speaker 3: Taste of sprint.

473
00:27:06,755 --> 00:27:09,555
Speaker 2: These companies were selling the future, and they needed a

474
00:27:09,635 --> 00:27:13,235
Speaker 2: sound to match it. In the nineteen fifties, Americans were

475
00:27:13,315 --> 00:27:16,595
Speaker 2: drunk on the post war promise of consumer technology. It

476
00:27:16,715 --> 00:27:19,275
Speaker 2: was the age of automatic, of being able to buy

477
00:27:19,395 --> 00:27:23,075
Speaker 2: all sorts of machines that would make your life easier, to.

478
00:27:23,115 --> 00:27:24,955
Speaker 9: Make reality of imagination.

479
00:27:26,355 --> 00:27:29,115
Speaker 7: This is Bendix the Tomorrow People.

480
00:27:32,355 --> 00:27:34,395
Speaker 2: Scott and Collins seemed at the time to have a

481
00:27:34,435 --> 00:27:37,715
Speaker 2: happy life together as the Tomorrow people, throwing parties at

482
00:27:37,715 --> 00:27:40,675
Speaker 2: their mansion, making music in the machine rooms and listening

483
00:27:40,715 --> 00:27:43,115
Speaker 2: to it in the listening room. They were, in many

484
00:27:43,155 --> 00:27:46,075
Speaker 2: ways the sound of that post war dream world. They

485
00:27:46,075 --> 00:27:48,955
Speaker 2: made music meant to push the button that sent consumers

486
00:27:48,995 --> 00:27:52,515
Speaker 2: marching off to make a purchase. During those years, Scott

487
00:27:52,555 --> 00:27:54,795
Speaker 2: was creating the kinds of machines. His music helped to

488
00:27:54,835 --> 00:27:58,155
Speaker 2: sell whirling spinning devices that seemed as if they came

489
00:27:58,195 --> 00:28:00,995
Speaker 2: from the future. Just keep in mind how different what

490
00:28:01,035 --> 00:28:03,995
Speaker 2: you're hearing is from popular music in the fifties. I mean,

491
00:28:04,275 --> 00:28:06,675
Speaker 2: this was the top song of nineteen fifty nine.

492
00:28:07,035 --> 00:28:10,595
Speaker 3: I Come Send the prettiest taper comedy. There wasn't as

493
00:28:10,635 --> 00:28:13,995
Speaker 3: many as there was. Obamical refired on Scower and they

494
00:28:14,195 --> 00:28:16,835
Speaker 3: began to run it down to Mississippi, to the Gulf

495
00:28:16,875 --> 00:28:18,075
Speaker 3: of Mexico.

496
00:28:20,515 --> 00:28:23,595
Speaker 2: Music like Scott's just didn't exist in the mainstream but

497
00:28:23,675 --> 00:28:26,955
Speaker 2: he was sneaking it in there through commercials. He saw

498
00:28:26,955 --> 00:28:29,435
Speaker 2: his machines as a way to push the envelope and

499
00:28:29,475 --> 00:28:32,075
Speaker 2: thought that because the sounds they made were new, they'd

500
00:28:32,075 --> 00:28:35,115
Speaker 2: catch the ear and away jingles made with old instruments couldn't.

501
00:28:36,395 --> 00:28:38,595
Speaker 2: Scott seems to have created one of the first, if

502
00:28:38,595 --> 00:28:41,715
Speaker 2: not the first, musical sequencer, a device that is the

503
00:28:41,715 --> 00:28:45,875
Speaker 2: foundation for much of modern pop. In a weird historical twist,

504
00:28:46,075 --> 00:28:48,755
Speaker 2: one of the ways he had financed all this experimentation

505
00:28:49,155 --> 00:28:51,675
Speaker 2: was by selling his early hits to Warner Brothers, where

506
00:28:51,715 --> 00:28:55,555
Speaker 2: they became a lot of the music soundtracking the Looney Tunes. Literally,

507
00:28:55,595 --> 00:29:00,995
Speaker 2: this man put the tunes in Looney Tunes. But then

508
00:29:01,035 --> 00:29:04,035
Speaker 2: he started to get sick. His brother and his father

509
00:29:04,155 --> 00:29:06,875
Speaker 2: had died of heart disease, and Scott had his first

510
00:29:06,875 --> 00:29:10,355
Speaker 2: heart attack in nineteen fifty eight. I don't think it's

511
00:29:10,355 --> 00:29:13,595
Speaker 2: a coincidence that within a year he began to work

512
00:29:13,715 --> 00:29:18,555
Speaker 2: on the first version of the Electronium, his songwriting machine.

513
00:29:19,675 --> 00:29:23,315
Speaker 12: I remember him telling me, you know about this machine.

514
00:29:23,595 --> 00:29:26,515
Speaker 12: I'm working on a machine that's going to compose and

515
00:29:26,675 --> 00:29:28,195
Speaker 12: perform at the same time.

516
00:29:28,955 --> 00:29:31,915
Speaker 2: This was the stuff of science fiction, a dream. A

517
00:29:31,955 --> 00:29:34,875
Speaker 2: few people had had, but nobody went for it quite

518
00:29:34,915 --> 00:29:38,275
Speaker 2: like Scott. A machine not just for playing music, but

519
00:29:38,315 --> 00:29:42,555
Speaker 2: for composing it. Scott began to work harder and harder

520
00:29:42,595 --> 00:29:45,715
Speaker 2: on the machine, and at the same time his marriage

521
00:29:45,755 --> 00:29:47,515
Speaker 2: to Dorothy Collins unraveled.

522
00:29:48,275 --> 00:29:52,275
Speaker 7: She discovered that she loved acting in the theater, and

523
00:29:52,555 --> 00:29:56,075
Speaker 7: my dad didn't travel with her or us. He was

524
00:29:56,115 --> 00:29:59,435
Speaker 7: always working on his own stuff. But I think there

525
00:29:59,515 --> 00:30:01,995
Speaker 7: was a certain lightness. I think that she probably found

526
00:30:02,235 --> 00:30:07,795
Speaker 7: being respected now, you know, for something new that was hers.

527
00:30:08,075 --> 00:30:10,315
Speaker 7: Acting was hers. He had nothing to to do with that.

528
00:30:11,835 --> 00:30:15,475
Speaker 2: Collins left and then they were divorced. She testified in

529
00:30:15,515 --> 00:30:19,515
Speaker 2: court that he was such a perfectionist, so intensely critical,

530
00:30:19,915 --> 00:30:22,635
Speaker 2: that he gave her asthma and she couldn't sing when

531
00:30:22,675 --> 00:30:23,315
Speaker 2: he was around.

532
00:30:24,355 --> 00:30:27,555
Speaker 7: So my mother used to say it was like Frankenstein's Monster,

533
00:30:27,715 --> 00:30:31,275
Speaker 7: and the monster kind of woke up and decided, you know,

534
00:30:32,915 --> 00:30:34,435
Speaker 7: that she could be her own person.

535
00:30:35,315 --> 00:30:38,635
Speaker 12: But Scott was bereft, and he took a bunch of

536
00:30:38,755 --> 00:30:42,555
Speaker 12: sleeping pills, thinking he was going to kill himself, but

537
00:30:42,635 --> 00:30:44,395
Speaker 12: he just went to sleep for a long time.

538
00:30:45,915 --> 00:30:48,915
Speaker 2: He moved out of the house into an industrial space

539
00:30:49,115 --> 00:30:52,595
Speaker 2: in a big office park, on Long Island. His TV

540
00:30:52,675 --> 00:30:55,475
Speaker 2: show was off the air, he didn't have a hit

541
00:30:55,555 --> 00:30:59,635
Speaker 2: band anymore, and he was alone, but he had one

542
00:30:59,795 --> 00:31:16,715
Speaker 2: thing left, the electronium.

543
00:31:16,835 --> 00:31:20,635
Speaker 12: I have very clear memories of being out there and

544
00:31:20,715 --> 00:31:25,835
Speaker 12: the electronium was in the very next room, iterating away,

545
00:31:25,955 --> 00:31:27,995
Speaker 12: which is what it did. You had to kind of

546
00:31:28,435 --> 00:31:30,675
Speaker 12: set it up, and then it would go through these

547
00:31:30,715 --> 00:31:34,275
Speaker 12: iterations and we would be listening to it, and he

548
00:31:34,315 --> 00:31:36,755
Speaker 12: would hear something he really liked and he'd jump up

549
00:31:36,795 --> 00:31:40,155
Speaker 12: and go in there and record it on the cassette.

550
00:31:40,275 --> 00:31:43,955
Speaker 2: In the nineteen sixties, Raymond Scott was living in a long, low,

551
00:31:44,035 --> 00:31:47,115
Speaker 2: white cement warehouse surrounded by machines.

552
00:31:48,235 --> 00:31:50,715
Speaker 11: He had to seriously downgrade his life.

553
00:31:51,195 --> 00:31:54,395
Speaker 2: Jeff Winner, he works with Choose It, that radio DJ

554
00:31:54,475 --> 00:31:57,475
Speaker 2: who went out to visit Scott, and together with Scott's family,

555
00:31:57,675 --> 00:32:00,435
Speaker 2: they're preserving, managing and sharing his archives.

556
00:32:00,835 --> 00:32:05,515
Speaker 13: He went from a massive mansion of his own design

557
00:32:06,075 --> 00:32:08,795
Speaker 13: to living on Long Island in a warehouse that wasn't

558
00:32:08,835 --> 00:32:12,275
Speaker 13: even zoned for resident dential, that didn't have a kitchen.

559
00:32:12,795 --> 00:32:14,555
Speaker 11: He was not supposed to be living there.

560
00:32:15,315 --> 00:32:18,075
Speaker 2: He'd gotten married for the third time to a woman

561
00:32:18,275 --> 00:32:21,995
Speaker 2: named Mitzi Curtis and this time it stuck. But money

562
00:32:22,075 --> 00:32:25,875
Speaker 2: was tight, popular music was moving on. He was still

563
00:32:25,875 --> 00:32:29,635
Speaker 2: composing the occasional jingle, but now really it was all

564
00:32:29,715 --> 00:32:33,955
Speaker 2: machines and not just in his warehouse. The concern over

565
00:32:33,995 --> 00:32:37,235
Speaker 2: automation was reaching a fever pitch in the United States.

566
00:32:37,835 --> 00:32:41,075
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty John F. Kennedy even ran for president

567
00:32:41,155 --> 00:32:43,635
Speaker 2: against the machine threat.

568
00:32:43,235 --> 00:32:45,915
Speaker 8: Because the problem that West Virginia is facing is the

569
00:32:45,955 --> 00:32:48,755
Speaker 8: problem that all America is going to face. That is

570
00:32:48,795 --> 00:32:51,795
Speaker 8: the problem of what happens to man when machines take

571
00:32:51,835 --> 00:32:52,315
Speaker 8: their place.

572
00:32:53,675 --> 00:32:56,755
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Raymond Scott seems to have been trying to replace

573
00:32:56,835 --> 00:32:59,195
Speaker 2: as much of himself as possible with the machine.

574
00:33:00,075 --> 00:33:03,395
Speaker 13: Everything he had ever done up until that point, in

575
00:33:03,435 --> 00:33:06,875
Speaker 13: one way or another, would become part of Electronium, even

576
00:33:06,915 --> 00:33:09,675
Speaker 13: if he hadn't even declared to himself that that was

577
00:33:09,835 --> 00:33:10,195
Speaker 13: his goal.

578
00:33:10,275 --> 00:33:12,955
Speaker 11: Yet it's like everything's under that one roof.

579
00:33:13,675 --> 00:33:17,755
Speaker 2: His baseline generator, his drum pattern generator, the melody sequencer,

580
00:33:18,315 --> 00:33:21,435
Speaker 2: all of it tied together with thick wires hidden behind

581
00:33:21,435 --> 00:33:23,075
Speaker 2: the concrete walls of the factory.

582
00:33:23,955 --> 00:33:29,355
Speaker 10: And when Raymond came to the door, the first thing

583
00:33:29,555 --> 00:33:33,595
Speaker 10: I encountered was, well, I want you to sign this

584
00:33:34,275 --> 00:33:36,235
Speaker 10: disclosure agreement.

585
00:33:36,915 --> 00:33:39,235
Speaker 2: Tom Ray he used to work at Mogue, probably the

586
00:33:39,235 --> 00:33:42,795
Speaker 2: most famous synthesizer company of all time. He's taught electronic

587
00:33:42,915 --> 00:33:45,075
Speaker 2: music history at the Berkeley College of Music, where he

588
00:33:45,115 --> 00:33:47,595
Speaker 2: was a professor. But at the time he met Scott

589
00:33:47,635 --> 00:33:49,955
Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen seventy, he was a graduate

590
00:33:49,995 --> 00:33:53,315
Speaker 2: student working on his dissertation for a PhD in music.

591
00:33:54,035 --> 00:33:58,275
Speaker 10: I mean, I'm not an industrial spy. I'm a graduate student.

592
00:33:59,195 --> 00:34:01,995
Speaker 2: Ray had heard that Scott was touched with genius, and

593
00:34:02,035 --> 00:34:03,715
Speaker 2: he wanted to see what he'd been inventing.

594
00:34:04,275 --> 00:34:07,435
Speaker 10: What did I see? I saw everything. Oh my gosh,

595
00:34:07,435 --> 00:34:10,675
Speaker 10: you know, what is this thing over here? And I said,

596
00:34:11,035 --> 00:34:13,235
Speaker 10: doesn't seem to have a keyboard or any kind of

597
00:34:13,275 --> 00:34:17,355
Speaker 10: an interface. He said, well, it does. It had one

598
00:34:17,395 --> 00:34:21,475
Speaker 10: little micro switch, and so he goes over and he

599
00:34:21,515 --> 00:34:25,715
Speaker 10: flips some of these many many knobs and switches and

600
00:34:25,755 --> 00:34:29,115
Speaker 10: things on the panel of the thing and said, I'm

601
00:34:29,115 --> 00:34:32,115
Speaker 10: going to have it suggest a theme, and it gives

602
00:34:32,115 --> 00:34:34,915
Speaker 10: out with a little melody, and then he says, uh,

603
00:34:35,195 --> 00:34:37,835
Speaker 10: I think I will ask it to make the intervals,

604
00:34:38,035 --> 00:34:41,795
Speaker 10: the music musical intervals wider, and he flips a couple

605
00:34:41,875 --> 00:34:46,555
Speaker 10: of switches and they're wider, you know, And he put together,

606
00:34:47,395 --> 00:34:55,675
Speaker 10: as I sat there, a rather lush uh composition with

607
00:34:56,035 --> 00:34:59,875
Speaker 10: not only accompaniment but counterpoint, and you know, the whole thing.

608
00:35:03,555 --> 00:35:07,515
Speaker 2: Scott was inventing madly during those years. The electronium combined

609
00:35:07,515 --> 00:35:09,675
Speaker 2: a lot of different gizmos he'd created, and it was

610
00:35:09,675 --> 00:35:13,275
Speaker 2: a constantly changing set of modules. You controlled the music

611
00:35:13,315 --> 00:35:16,035
Speaker 2: the machine made by means of switches he called the

612
00:35:16,035 --> 00:35:19,555
Speaker 2: composer guidance control. One of the major X factors of

613
00:35:19,595 --> 00:35:21,835
Speaker 2: the electronium is that it seems to have had some

614
00:35:21,915 --> 00:35:25,435
Speaker 2: way of generating randomness within the preset patterns. They would

615
00:35:25,515 --> 00:35:28,035
Speaker 2: change on their own over time. But it's not clear

616
00:35:28,035 --> 00:35:31,715
Speaker 2: to anyone how This was a crazy idea. But you

617
00:35:31,755 --> 00:35:33,955
Speaker 2: can get a clue to why Scott was after it

618
00:35:34,075 --> 00:35:36,475
Speaker 2: from an ad he made around then with Jim Henson,

619
00:35:36,715 --> 00:35:39,955
Speaker 2: the Muppets guy for IBM. They were pitching a new

620
00:35:39,995 --> 00:35:43,275
Speaker 2: word processor. But the ad is all about modern life.

621
00:35:43,715 --> 00:35:46,515
Speaker 2: It's a kind of crazy montage of vacant looking people,

622
00:35:46,875 --> 00:35:48,875
Speaker 2: machines and explosions.

623
00:35:49,435 --> 00:35:53,075
Speaker 1: There always seemed to be enough time to do the paperwork.

624
00:35:53,635 --> 00:35:56,635
Speaker 7: What today there is today?

625
00:35:56,835 --> 00:35:58,235
Speaker 1: There isn't enough time.

626
00:35:58,355 --> 00:36:02,075
Speaker 9: Today, There aren't enough people machines should do the work,

627
00:36:02,515 --> 00:36:03,915
Speaker 9: that's what their best bet.

628
00:36:04,155 --> 00:36:07,275
Speaker 10: People should do the thinking, that's what their best at.

629
00:36:07,795 --> 00:36:10,035
Speaker 2: But what about a machine that did the work and

630
00:36:10,075 --> 00:36:13,595
Speaker 2: the thinking. When Scott was born, machines were being created

631
00:36:13,675 --> 00:36:16,835
Speaker 2: mostly to help people do wrote physical labor. In the

632
00:36:16,835 --> 00:36:19,315
Speaker 2: first half of the twentieth century, they began to do

633
00:36:19,355 --> 00:36:22,635
Speaker 2: those things automatically at the push of a button, and

634
00:36:22,675 --> 00:36:26,275
Speaker 2: by the age of the electronium, machines began automatically to

635
00:36:26,355 --> 00:36:29,355
Speaker 2: do things that looked a lot like intellectual labor.

636
00:36:30,995 --> 00:36:33,915
Speaker 4: This rolebot manipulator can be easily taught because of its

637
00:36:33,955 --> 00:36:34,875
Speaker 4: electronic brains.

638
00:36:36,115 --> 00:36:39,515
Speaker 13: Can this type of control be applied to other types

639
00:36:39,555 --> 00:36:40,275
Speaker 13: of machines?

640
00:36:40,315 --> 00:36:44,835
Speaker 2: Certainly in that light, Scott was reaching for the brass ring,

641
00:36:45,635 --> 00:36:49,435
Speaker 2: a machine capable of making art, of helping people make

642
00:36:49,555 --> 00:36:53,155
Speaker 2: art that expressed a human soul and stirred human emotions.

643
00:36:53,915 --> 00:36:56,555
Speaker 2: But he needed money to do it, so he started

644
00:36:56,555 --> 00:36:59,955
Speaker 2: doing a little press, small articles here and there. It's

645
00:36:59,995 --> 00:37:03,035
Speaker 2: like inventing the typewriter, he told a journalist. Only the

646
00:37:03,035 --> 00:37:06,315
Speaker 2: typewriter furnishes the plot and reads the result.

647
00:37:06,675 --> 00:37:11,035
Speaker 10: I've always told people that I consider Raymonds Scott one

648
00:37:11,075 --> 00:37:13,875
Speaker 10: of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and music.

649
00:37:14,435 --> 00:37:17,115
Speaker 2: But if you wanted to buy an electronium from Raymond Scott,

650
00:37:17,275 --> 00:37:18,955
Speaker 2: it was going to cost you an arm and a leg.

651
00:37:19,675 --> 00:37:22,235
Speaker 2: And it was a crazy idea. So it was by

652
00:37:22,235 --> 00:37:24,955
Speaker 2: a stroke of luck that the head of Motown Records,

653
00:37:25,195 --> 00:37:27,515
Speaker 2: Barry Gordy, heard about it.

654
00:37:27,515 --> 00:37:30,075
Speaker 5: It was not a one man organization or two man organization,

655
00:37:30,195 --> 00:37:32,555
Speaker 5: but it is an organization of teamwork, you know.

656
00:37:32,675 --> 00:37:35,235
Speaker 6: I mean, it's an unseeing hero, so to speak.

657
00:37:35,915 --> 00:37:39,635
Speaker 2: Barry Gordy founded Motown in nineteen fifty nine in Detroit.

658
00:37:40,195 --> 00:37:42,595
Speaker 2: Before founding the company, he had worked at a car

659
00:37:42,635 --> 00:37:45,115
Speaker 2: factory during the years when there was lots of hubbub

660
00:37:45,155 --> 00:37:48,355
Speaker 2: over plants that had achieved near full automation. It was

661
00:37:48,355 --> 00:37:51,155
Speaker 2: on the assembly line that Gordy started to think about

662
00:37:51,155 --> 00:37:55,355
Speaker 2: doing music differently. In his autobiography, he wrote that the

663
00:37:55,395 --> 00:37:58,515
Speaker 2: plant the cars started out as just a frame pulled

664
00:37:58,515 --> 00:38:01,155
Speaker 2: along on conveyor belts until they emerged at the end

665
00:38:01,195 --> 00:38:04,275
Speaker 2: of the line. I wanted the same concept for my company,

666
00:38:04,675 --> 00:38:07,355
Speaker 2: only with artists and songs and records.

667
00:38:08,435 --> 00:38:10,475
Speaker 5: It would it gone any year without can wreck as

668
00:38:10,515 --> 00:38:12,035
Speaker 5: we've been out of business.

669
00:38:12,395 --> 00:38:15,315
Speaker 2: Motown was a black owned business selling music by black

670
00:38:15,435 --> 00:38:19,115
Speaker 2: artists to everyone in America, like everything in the music business,

671
00:38:19,275 --> 00:38:23,155
Speaker 2: who was precarious economically because hit records deal in matters

672
00:38:23,155 --> 00:38:27,355
Speaker 2: of taste, and taste is subject to bias, sees and whims. Gordy,

673
00:38:27,475 --> 00:38:30,595
Speaker 2: with his assembly line passed, wasn't having that. He wanted

674
00:38:30,595 --> 00:38:34,235
Speaker 2: to systematize as much as possible. They'd ab test songs

675
00:38:34,275 --> 00:38:37,115
Speaker 2: with different artists until something stuck. Like R and D.

676
00:38:37,715 --> 00:38:41,235
Speaker 2: They had a house band, the Funk Brothers, providing ironclad

677
00:38:41,315 --> 00:38:44,595
Speaker 2: rhythm section arrangements across Motown songs as if they were

678
00:38:44,635 --> 00:38:48,555
Speaker 2: the engine department. The only thing missing was the automation.

679
00:38:51,075 --> 00:38:53,235
Speaker 2: And that's why it makes sense to me that one

680
00:38:53,315 --> 00:38:57,675
Speaker 2: day in the early nineteen seventies, Barry Gordy pulled up

681
00:38:57,715 --> 00:39:01,115
Speaker 2: to Raymond Scott's warehouse with a string of limos to

682
00:39:01,195 --> 00:39:03,915
Speaker 2: see the automatic songwriting machine for himself.

683
00:39:04,235 --> 00:39:06,795
Speaker 13: And by the way, Barry Gordy knew who Raymond Scott was.

684
00:39:06,875 --> 00:39:09,795
Speaker 13: Like anybody of his generation, Raymond Scott was a famous person,

685
00:39:10,555 --> 00:39:13,675
Speaker 13: so Gordy also knew he was getting that in the deal,

686
00:39:14,275 --> 00:39:18,195
Speaker 13: someone who is a musical mind who has already written hits.

687
00:39:18,835 --> 00:39:21,915
Speaker 2: Scott showed Gordy and his crew the warehouse, and then

688
00:39:21,955 --> 00:39:24,395
Speaker 2: he fired up the electronium, just like he did with Ray.

689
00:39:26,155 --> 00:39:28,555
Speaker 2: He must have shown Gordy how you flip the switches

690
00:39:28,595 --> 00:39:31,875
Speaker 2: to set a pattern. Then watch does the machine iterated,

691
00:39:32,155 --> 00:39:37,995
Speaker 2: changing notes, repeating phrases, rifling through ideas semi randomly, and.

692
00:39:38,635 --> 00:39:40,915
Speaker 5: During the last couple of minutes of Patta Generator was

693
00:39:44,195 --> 00:39:44,915
Speaker 5: four or five.

694
00:39:48,035 --> 00:39:51,315
Speaker 2: Scott was selling an idea at that point, the potential

695
00:39:51,395 --> 00:39:53,715
Speaker 2: of a songwriting machine that could hit on, an idea

696
00:39:53,835 --> 00:39:56,675
Speaker 2: that a person alone never would if it came up

697
00:39:56,675 --> 00:39:58,395
Speaker 2: with a hook that sparked in the way a hit

698
00:39:58,515 --> 00:40:00,675
Speaker 2: does you know it when you heard it, and you

699
00:40:00,675 --> 00:40:03,115
Speaker 2: could bottle it up and sell it to millions of people.

700
00:40:05,155 --> 00:40:09,875
Speaker 2: This idea, I think came straight from Scott's quintetes finding

701
00:40:09,915 --> 00:40:12,835
Speaker 2: that sound that you liked the first time you hear it.

702
00:40:12,835 --> 00:40:15,515
Speaker 2: It's a tricky balancing act because it has to be

703
00:40:15,595 --> 00:40:18,395
Speaker 2: new enough that it catches your attention. But a hit

704
00:40:18,435 --> 00:40:20,795
Speaker 2: also has to sound familiar enough that you kind of

705
00:40:20,795 --> 00:40:22,115
Speaker 2: know what you're going to get as soon as you

706
00:40:22,155 --> 00:40:24,875
Speaker 2: hear it. It's like an elevator pitch to the listener,

707
00:40:25,075 --> 00:40:28,955
Speaker 2: and Gordy was uncompromising about it. Here's Smokey Robinson in

708
00:40:28,995 --> 00:40:32,795
Speaker 2: a twenty nineteen documentary remembering that process.

709
00:40:32,515 --> 00:40:33,835
Speaker 7: He used to say that all time we got to

710
00:40:33,835 --> 00:40:35,115
Speaker 7: get him in first ten seconds.

711
00:40:35,195 --> 00:40:37,355
Speaker 6: We has to grab company's fabulous intros.

712
00:40:37,675 --> 00:40:40,035
Speaker 7: You know, something that would get your digit immediately.

713
00:40:40,595 --> 00:40:43,355
Speaker 2: So in that light, the electronium makes perfect sense to me.

714
00:40:43,955 --> 00:40:45,955
Speaker 2: What if you could take a machine that had baked

715
00:40:45,955 --> 00:40:48,675
Speaker 2: into it all of the patterns, an intuitive musical sense

716
00:40:48,715 --> 00:40:51,555
Speaker 2: of a proven hit maker like Scott, but then this

717
00:40:51,715 --> 00:40:56,875
Speaker 2: crazy X factor of proto artificially intelligent randomness. That dream

718
00:40:57,195 --> 00:41:01,355
Speaker 2: was Scott's life's work. He needed it to work. Everything

719
00:41:01,435 --> 00:41:02,155
Speaker 2: was writing on it.

720
00:41:07,075 --> 00:41:10,155
Speaker 13: So Gordy was so impressed that you wrote a check

721
00:41:10,195 --> 00:41:13,115
Speaker 13: on the spot for ten thousand dollars to get started,

722
00:41:13,435 --> 00:41:14,955
Speaker 13: and that was a lot of money back then.

723
00:41:17,915 --> 00:41:21,955
Speaker 2: It was a huge windfall. Scott was overjoyed. Gordy wanted

724
00:41:21,955 --> 00:41:25,635
Speaker 2: the instrument remade to suit Motown's needs, so Scott began

725
00:41:25,715 --> 00:41:29,795
Speaker 2: work immediately. The machine would be a culmination of everything

726
00:41:29,795 --> 00:41:33,395
Speaker 2: he'd worked on up to that point, including the player

727
00:41:33,435 --> 00:41:36,755
Speaker 2: piano from his childhood. Here's a call from a couple

728
00:41:36,795 --> 00:41:40,115
Speaker 2: of years earlier between Scott and Bob Mogue. The synthesizer

729
00:41:40,195 --> 00:41:42,955
Speaker 2: legend who'd worked with him. And this knocked me out

730
00:41:42,995 --> 00:41:44,915
Speaker 2: when I first heard it in the archives. But he

731
00:41:45,075 --> 00:41:47,755
Speaker 2: was still thinking about the player piano. You can hear

732
00:41:47,795 --> 00:41:49,555
Speaker 2: the ideas just bursting out of him.

733
00:41:50,115 --> 00:41:52,355
Speaker 5: I have some things that I think would lest we

734
00:41:52,475 --> 00:41:58,035
Speaker 5: slip you, and this is holy secret stuff. But well,

735
00:41:58,275 --> 00:41:59,675
Speaker 5: I'll have to explain with you when I see when

736
00:41:59,675 --> 00:42:03,315
Speaker 5: I see. Okay, but you know, the programming is inevitable.

737
00:42:03,395 --> 00:42:05,915
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, the computing machine to programming things

738
00:42:06,995 --> 00:42:09,355
Speaker 5: was programming things and all the what a major tools

739
00:42:09,395 --> 00:42:13,875
Speaker 5: of program thinks. Yeah, and so the programming, it's going

740
00:42:13,955 --> 00:42:14,795
Speaker 5: to be the way it's done.

741
00:42:15,595 --> 00:42:21,195
Speaker 2: A player piano for the space age. Scott, of course,

742
00:42:21,275 --> 00:42:23,835
Speaker 2: quickly blew through the Motown down payment and ran out

743
00:42:23,875 --> 00:42:27,515
Speaker 2: of time, but Gordy didn't seem to mind. Scott moved

744
00:42:27,515 --> 00:42:30,235
Speaker 2: out to Motown's offices in Los Angeles to work on

745
00:42:30,275 --> 00:42:33,875
Speaker 2: the electronium in a room above Barry Gordy's garage. He

746
00:42:33,915 --> 00:42:38,555
Speaker 2: became the director of Electronic Music Research and Development. Eventually

747
00:42:38,675 --> 00:42:41,635
Speaker 2: he started to work on the machine in the Motown studios.

748
00:42:41,995 --> 00:42:44,875
Speaker 7: People were in awe of him. I'm thinking of a

749
00:42:44,915 --> 00:42:48,115
Speaker 7: couple different engineers who were up there who would just

750
00:42:48,275 --> 00:42:50,195
Speaker 7: come out and be like shaking their heads, kind of

751
00:42:50,235 --> 00:42:52,435
Speaker 7: like like you know what is going on kind of thing.

752
00:42:52,835 --> 00:42:55,995
Speaker 2: Scott's daughter deb stud to Baker again. According to a

753
00:42:56,035 --> 00:42:59,995
Speaker 2: former engineer at Motown, Michael Jackson would come by Scott's studio,

754
00:43:00,235 --> 00:43:02,755
Speaker 2: a small room on the second floor, and watched the

755
00:43:02,755 --> 00:43:07,595
Speaker 2: electronium work. It made music unlike anything they'd heard. The

756
00:43:07,635 --> 00:43:10,035
Speaker 2: idea wasn't that the machine would write a complete song

757
00:43:10,035 --> 00:43:13,515
Speaker 2: structure versus chorus bridge, but that it would iterate on

758
00:43:13,635 --> 00:43:17,515
Speaker 2: combinations of rhythm, chord and melody in search of that spark.

759
00:43:18,035 --> 00:43:20,275
Speaker 2: It was a way of automating the part of songwriting.

760
00:43:20,315 --> 00:43:23,435
Speaker 2: Scot excelled at the thing that caught your ear and

761
00:43:23,515 --> 00:43:26,595
Speaker 2: made you like something the first time you heard it.

762
00:43:26,595 --> 00:43:29,275
Speaker 2: It was meant as a collaboration between man and machine,

763
00:43:29,715 --> 00:43:31,475
Speaker 2: one that took the hard work out of the most

764
00:43:31,555 --> 00:43:39,035
Speaker 2: crucial part of the songwriting process, the inspiration. But over

765
00:43:39,115 --> 00:43:42,555
Speaker 2: time the extreme cost weighed the project down. Also the

766
00:43:42,595 --> 00:43:46,115
Speaker 2: fact that Scott was never satisfied, refused to be finished.

767
00:43:46,715 --> 00:43:52,035
Speaker 2: The electronium worked, it just was always opened up, being redesigned, refined, changed.

768
00:43:52,755 --> 00:43:55,715
Speaker 2: At one point that same engineer tried to get Motown's

769
00:43:55,755 --> 00:43:58,715
Speaker 2: famous session musicians to play along with the machine as

770
00:43:58,755 --> 00:44:01,075
Speaker 2: part of a drive to use the instrument on a recording.

771
00:44:01,595 --> 00:44:02,435
Speaker 2: But they revolted.

772
00:44:03,555 --> 00:44:04,835
Speaker 11: They didn't like it.

773
00:44:04,875 --> 00:44:06,835
Speaker 13: They didn't like the idea of it, they didn't like

774
00:44:07,155 --> 00:44:10,795
Speaker 13: the concept, they didn't like what it theoretically presented. And

775
00:44:10,915 --> 00:44:14,395
Speaker 13: these guys were great musicians. They didn't want to be

776
00:44:14,435 --> 00:44:15,715
Speaker 13: replaced by a machine.

777
00:44:18,275 --> 00:44:21,435
Speaker 2: It's not known whether the electronium ever suggested an idea

778
00:44:21,475 --> 00:44:23,875
Speaker 2: that made it into a motown song, but I think

779
00:44:23,875 --> 00:44:27,635
Speaker 2: it's unlikely. Gordy let Scott take the electronium home with

780
00:44:27,715 --> 00:44:31,075
Speaker 2: him eventually to tinker with it around the house. He'd

781
00:44:31,075 --> 00:44:32,995
Speaker 2: stay up all night and work on it all day

782
00:44:32,995 --> 00:44:36,715
Speaker 2: in his pajamas, building new bits and pieces, taking it apart,

783
00:44:36,875 --> 00:44:40,075
Speaker 2: and building it again. Then his health got worse, the

784
00:44:40,155 --> 00:44:43,515
Speaker 2: music industry moved on, started to forget about him. He

785
00:44:43,635 --> 00:44:46,875
Speaker 2: had several strokes, and the electronium sat in the guests

786
00:44:46,875 --> 00:44:50,835
Speaker 2: shed out back, gathering dust, waiting to be found.

787
00:44:51,555 --> 00:44:53,835
Speaker 4: Well, it's doctor Frankenstein's monster.

788
00:44:53,635 --> 00:44:53,995
Speaker 11: Isn't it.

789
00:44:54,475 --> 00:44:58,515
Speaker 2: Brian Keihew again synthesizer wizard, former keyboardist for The Who,

790
00:44:58,715 --> 00:45:01,875
Speaker 2: Fiona Apple, producer and the second person this episode to

791
00:45:01,875 --> 00:45:05,475
Speaker 2: bring up Frankenstein's monster more happily, in this case about

792
00:45:05,475 --> 00:45:08,675
Speaker 2: a machine rather than a person. He's working now to

793
00:45:08,675 --> 00:45:12,355
Speaker 2: bring the electronium back to life. We spoke last winter.

794
00:45:13,115 --> 00:45:17,315
Speaker 4: And so electronium might be literally just a piece of inspiration.

795
00:45:17,635 --> 00:45:19,795
Speaker 4: If I play piano or if I play guitar and

796
00:45:19,835 --> 00:45:23,435
Speaker 4: write songs, my fingers are even limiting because I tend

797
00:45:23,435 --> 00:45:26,235
Speaker 4: to play a certain chord shape where I'm jazzier and

798
00:45:26,275 --> 00:45:30,235
Speaker 4: he's more country. But if the electronium was not confined

799
00:45:30,275 --> 00:45:33,035
Speaker 4: by those things, it might come up with ideas that

800
00:45:33,075 --> 00:45:37,275
Speaker 4: are beautiful hybrids. Maybe little jazzy, but little polka, and

801
00:45:37,355 --> 00:45:39,795
Speaker 4: who knows what it would come up with. But that's

802
00:45:39,915 --> 00:45:43,835
Speaker 4: an idea to say that the human creativity is limited.

803
00:45:43,875 --> 00:45:46,075
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful thing when it works, but as we know,

804
00:45:46,715 --> 00:45:49,955
Speaker 4: you can't just write great music all day, otherwise everybody would.

805
00:45:50,115 --> 00:45:51,595
Speaker 2: I guess part of the problem is, like in a

806
00:45:51,595 --> 00:45:55,755
Speaker 2: creative line of work, your business, especially when you're a motown,

807
00:45:55,875 --> 00:45:58,715
Speaker 2: which is an empire. At that point, it's totally dependent

808
00:45:58,755 --> 00:46:02,315
Speaker 2: on this fundamentally unknowable, unreliable thing which is human creativity.

809
00:46:02,395 --> 00:46:04,035
Speaker 2: Like you never really know when the music is going

810
00:46:04,115 --> 00:46:06,955
Speaker 2: to strike, and so especially with the kind of assembly

811
00:46:07,035 --> 00:46:13,235
Speaker 2: line motown idea. If you could just make that predictable

812
00:46:13,395 --> 00:46:18,635
Speaker 2: and automate it the aha moment, then that would take

813
00:46:18,635 --> 00:46:20,755
Speaker 2: a lot of the uncertainty out of the business.

814
00:46:21,195 --> 00:46:23,475
Speaker 4: I think you pointed out something that most people don't

815
00:46:23,515 --> 00:46:27,675
Speaker 4: want to ever mention, which is that creativity is unreliable.

816
00:46:28,395 --> 00:46:30,675
Speaker 4: You might be Paul McCartney and able to write some

817
00:46:30,795 --> 00:46:32,675
Speaker 4: of the world's greatest songs. But if I brought him

818
00:46:32,675 --> 00:46:34,115
Speaker 4: in the room right now and gave him an hour,

819
00:46:34,235 --> 00:46:37,355
Speaker 4: said write me a great song, it doesn't work that way.

820
00:46:40,355 --> 00:46:43,395
Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way. But you can understand why

821
00:46:43,435 --> 00:46:46,715
Speaker 2: someone who devoted his whole life to making perfect music,

822
00:46:47,155 --> 00:46:50,315
Speaker 2: I wish that it did. It was.

823
00:47:01,515 --> 00:47:10,995
Speaker 6: A body.

824
00:47:14,275 --> 00:47:17,715
Speaker 2: Raymond Scott died in nineteen ninety four in obscurity and

825
00:47:17,755 --> 00:47:21,155
Speaker 2: relative poverty in a nursing home near that faded house,

826
00:47:21,195 --> 00:47:24,955
Speaker 2: and Van Nuys Jus a winner. A slew of fellow

827
00:47:25,035 --> 00:47:28,355
Speaker 2: enthusiasts and the Scott family started to comb through his

828
00:47:28,475 --> 00:47:31,995
Speaker 2: archives to piece the whole crazy story together. They shipped

829
00:47:32,035 --> 00:47:34,835
Speaker 2: boxes and boxes of tapes and records and papers to

830
00:47:34,875 --> 00:47:38,115
Speaker 2: the mar Sound Archives at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

831
00:47:38,675 --> 00:47:42,675
Speaker 2: Then they released his music and compilations. Scott had always

832
00:47:42,755 --> 00:47:45,915
Speaker 2: kept his machines mostly secret in case anyone wanted to

833
00:47:45,915 --> 00:47:49,435
Speaker 2: steal them, but when they finally released Scott's electronic music

834
00:47:49,435 --> 00:47:51,675
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands, he suddenly had a new

835
00:47:51,715 --> 00:47:54,835
Speaker 2: set of posthumous hits. You probably don't even realize you've

836
00:47:54,835 --> 00:47:57,675
Speaker 2: heard a Raymond Scott's song before, but he's been sampled

837
00:47:57,715 --> 00:48:01,835
Speaker 2: all over the place. Gorillas, Jay Dilla, Lizzo, they've all

838
00:48:01,875 --> 00:48:04,835
Speaker 2: sampled Scott. His music is in the Simpsons, ren and

839
00:48:04,875 --> 00:48:09,475
Speaker 2: Stimpy HBO shows. The song you're hearing now is called Portofino,

840
00:48:09,955 --> 00:48:12,955
Speaker 2: and it was unreleased in his lifetime, but there are

841
00:48:12,955 --> 00:48:16,035
Speaker 2: all these recordings of it, each trying it a different way,

842
00:48:16,475 --> 00:48:21,075
Speaker 2: all electronics, with vocals, with saxophone. When the archivists found it,

843
00:48:21,315 --> 00:48:24,275
Speaker 2: choose it, thought the melody was so classic it must

844
00:48:24,275 --> 00:48:24,835
Speaker 2: have been a cover.

845
00:48:25,275 --> 00:48:28,675
Speaker 3: And I went into various databases looking for a Portafino.

846
00:48:29,235 --> 00:48:32,955
Speaker 3: There's like eighty or one hundred things called Portafino, and

847
00:48:32,995 --> 00:48:35,475
Speaker 3: I would go through iTunes listen to every goddamn one

848
00:48:35,475 --> 00:48:37,555
Speaker 3: of them, and not one of them was Raymond's melody.

849
00:48:37,795 --> 00:48:40,475
Speaker 3: But to this date, I mean, that thing's been out

850
00:48:40,515 --> 00:48:42,395
Speaker 3: for twenty one years, no one has come to us

851
00:48:42,395 --> 00:48:45,795
Speaker 3: and said, h that's cover version, or someone else wrote that,

852
00:48:45,915 --> 00:48:47,635
Speaker 3: or if it's a traditional melody.

853
00:48:48,035 --> 00:48:52,515
Speaker 2: A true original. Meanwhile, Mark Mothersbaugh, the lead singer of Devo,

854
00:48:52,875 --> 00:48:55,595
Speaker 2: bought the electronium and dragged it from the shed to

855
00:48:55,675 --> 00:48:59,555
Speaker 2: his studios. Brian key Hugh is trying now to assemble

856
00:48:59,555 --> 00:49:02,155
Speaker 2: a team of engineers to bring it back online in

857
00:49:02,235 --> 00:49:05,835
Speaker 2: digital or physical form. Even with all the schematics, they're

858
00:49:05,875 --> 00:49:06,755
Speaker 2: still mystified.

859
00:49:07,155 --> 00:49:09,395
Speaker 4: You know, somebody said it's still a black box, and

860
00:49:09,435 --> 00:49:12,235
Speaker 4: that's true. Two we still don't know what it did.

861
00:49:12,355 --> 00:49:14,915
Speaker 4: And I feel like we're looking through a keyhole at

862
00:49:14,915 --> 00:49:17,395
Speaker 4: a room and we can barely see it until we

863
00:49:17,395 --> 00:49:18,555
Speaker 4: get through the door a bit more.

864
00:49:19,995 --> 00:49:23,555
Speaker 2: There are Scott cover bands and Scott festivals. Somehow his

865
00:49:23,675 --> 00:49:27,315
Speaker 2: music still resonates. Whatever spark he caught is still catching.

866
00:49:27,995 --> 00:49:30,315
Speaker 2: What I think is strange as most of the musicians

867
00:49:30,355 --> 00:49:32,315
Speaker 2: who knew Scott earlier in his life seemed to have

868
00:49:32,395 --> 00:49:34,875
Speaker 2: hated him, but the engineers who knew him at the

869
00:49:34,955 --> 00:49:37,475
Speaker 2: end of his life loved him. A lot of his

870
00:49:37,515 --> 00:49:41,555
Speaker 2: early jazz hits were aggressive, frantic firecrackers of song, but

871
00:49:41,595 --> 00:49:45,875
Speaker 2: the electronic stuff is often sweet, guileless, innocent. Some of

872
00:49:45,915 --> 00:49:49,595
Speaker 2: that stuff was written in partnership with the electronium. His melody,

873
00:49:49,955 --> 00:49:53,155
Speaker 2: its patterns, and it sounds like a songwriter at peace

874
00:49:53,155 --> 00:49:53,755
Speaker 2: with himself.

875
00:49:54,555 --> 00:49:57,955
Speaker 4: At one point he'd resisted human control of it, but

876
00:49:57,995 --> 00:50:00,195
Speaker 4: then he took one of the voice cards and adapted

877
00:50:00,235 --> 00:50:03,315
Speaker 4: it to a keyboard input. As he found before when

878
00:50:03,355 --> 00:50:06,035
Speaker 4: he would put a Hammond organ or mostly an ondiolane

879
00:50:06,075 --> 00:50:09,435
Speaker 4: on top of the electronium, it really needed somebody doing

880
00:50:09,475 --> 00:50:13,635
Speaker 4: a nice melody in order to sell the package.

881
00:50:17,555 --> 00:50:20,955
Speaker 2: There is I think a lesson in Scott's life, one

882
00:50:20,995 --> 00:50:23,515
Speaker 2: that's kind of a morality tale for our own AI

883
00:50:23,595 --> 00:50:28,315
Speaker 2: adult chat GPT world. He walked from automatic pianos to

884
00:50:28,395 --> 00:50:33,915
Speaker 2: the first computers. He sought perfection, he sought industrial scale creativity,

885
00:50:34,595 --> 00:50:37,995
Speaker 2: but the trade offs he made were the relationships around him,

886
00:50:38,235 --> 00:50:40,675
Speaker 2: the failure to see the humanity of the people he

887
00:50:40,715 --> 00:50:44,155
Speaker 2: was trying to control. People would sometimes talk about Scott

888
00:50:44,195 --> 00:50:47,155
Speaker 2: as if hero a machine, But I think there's something

889
00:50:47,195 --> 00:50:50,475
Speaker 2: in his music that testifies to a soul, that ghost

890
00:50:50,555 --> 00:50:53,795
Speaker 2: at the keys of the player piano, those recorded phone

891
00:50:53,835 --> 00:50:57,515
Speaker 2: calls to his family, that early string of hits, all

892
00:50:57,595 --> 00:51:01,155
Speaker 2: the musical machines What they have in common is the

893
00:51:01,155 --> 00:51:06,595
Speaker 2: goal of each song to connect people through sound. Scott

894
00:51:06,675 --> 00:51:10,795
Speaker 2: prized perfection in that end above everything else, and it

895
00:51:10,915 --> 00:51:14,795
Speaker 2: ruined him. Someday soon someone might be able to bring

896
00:51:14,795 --> 00:51:17,955
Speaker 2: the Electronium back to life. And here again the inside

897
00:51:17,955 --> 00:51:21,515
Speaker 2: of Scott's mind. But still I think he must have

898
00:51:21,595 --> 00:51:25,315
Speaker 2: known the Electronium could never write a Raymond Scott song.

899
00:51:26,435 --> 00:51:29,195
Speaker 2: For that you needed Raymond Scott.

900
00:51:30,835 --> 00:51:32,635
Speaker 9: Or Shall we go On?

901
00:51:44,435 --> 00:51:48,275
Speaker 2: The Last Archive? Is written and hosted by me Ben Nataphaffrey.

902
00:51:48,835 --> 00:51:51,875
Speaker 2: It's produced by me and Lucy Sullivan and edited by

903
00:51:51,915 --> 00:51:56,075
Speaker 2: Sophie Crane. Jake Gorsky is our engineer. Fact checking on

904
00:51:56,115 --> 00:52:00,035
Speaker 2: this episode by Arthur Gomperts and Lucy Sullivan. Sound design

905
00:52:00,195 --> 00:52:04,235
Speaker 2: by Jake Gorsky and Lucy Sullivan. Our executive producers are

906
00:52:04,275 --> 00:52:08,195
Speaker 2: Sophie Crane and Jill Lapour. Thanks also to Julia Barton

907
00:52:08,355 --> 00:52:13,075
Speaker 2: Pushkin's executive editor. Original music by Matthias Bossi and John

908
00:52:13,115 --> 00:52:17,715
Speaker 2: Evans of stell Wagon Symphonet. Additional music by Qorantooth. Our

909
00:52:17,755 --> 00:52:19,555
Speaker 2: foolproof player is Becca A.

910
00:52:19,795 --> 00:52:20,675
Speaker 1: Lewis.

911
00:52:20,755 --> 00:52:23,235
Speaker 2: Many of our sound effects are from Harry Janette Junior

912
00:52:23,275 --> 00:52:26,955
Speaker 2: in the Star Ganette Foundation. Special thanks on this episode

913
00:52:27,035 --> 00:52:30,355
Speaker 2: to Alan w and Tenman, Jack Hurtz, Carl Miller and

914
00:52:30,395 --> 00:52:34,995
Speaker 2: the Piurian Recording Society, and Byron Werner. For a bibliography,

915
00:52:35,195 --> 00:52:38,155
Speaker 2: further reading, and a transcript and teaching guide to this episode,

916
00:52:38,315 --> 00:52:41,515
Speaker 2: head to the Last Archive dot com. The Last Archive

917
00:52:41,635 --> 00:52:44,835
Speaker 2: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show,

918
00:52:45,035 --> 00:52:48,915
Speaker 2: consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content and ad

919
00:52:48,915 --> 00:52:51,875
Speaker 2: free listening across our network for four ninety nine a month.

920
00:52:52,275 --> 00:52:55,315
Speaker 2: Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or

921
00:52:55,315 --> 00:52:57,955
Speaker 2: at pushkin dot fm, and please sign up for our

922
00:52:57,995 --> 00:53:02,115
Speaker 2: newsletter at pushkin dot fm Slash Newsletter. To find more

923
00:53:02,155 --> 00:53:06,475
Speaker 2: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

924
00:53:06,475 --> 00:53:09,635
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ben Nattafhaffrey.