WEBVTT - Player Piano 0:00:16.115 --> 0:00:30.275 Pushkin The Last Archive, A History of Truth. 0:00:33.875 --> 0:00:36.635 About thirty years ago, a man named Irwin choose It 0:00:36.715 --> 0:00:39.875 encountered one of the strangest machines almost nobody had ever 0:00:39.915 --> 0:00:40.235 heard of. 0:00:41.235 --> 0:00:44.275 I was forty, I was broke. It's kind of a 0:00:44.315 --> 0:00:45.275 professional failure. 0:00:46.235 --> 0:00:48.835 Choose It was a DJ for a small community radio 0:00:48.875 --> 0:00:51.755 station in New Jersey. A friend of his had put 0:00:51.795 --> 0:00:54.955 him on to a musician named Raymond Scott, one of 0:00:55.035 --> 0:00:58.195 the most famous musicians of the early twentieth century, who 0:00:58.195 --> 0:01:00.675 had somehow been completely lost to history. 0:01:01.195 --> 0:01:04.235 These were records that were twenty five cents of pop 0:01:04.315 --> 0:01:07.035 and used record stores back then, and you didn't They 0:01:07.035 --> 0:01:07.995 didn't even have him in a bin. 0:01:08.115 --> 0:01:11.915 They had him under the bins JUSI loved Scott's music, 0:01:12.275 --> 0:01:14.315 and he began to get drawn into the mystery of 0:01:14.315 --> 0:01:18.155 it all. Who was this guy? He was obsessed, but 0:01:18.435 --> 0:01:19.955 his research kept dead ending. 0:01:20.755 --> 0:01:23.555 I went to a library and went looking through music 0:01:23.635 --> 0:01:26.715 history books, and there's almost no mention of Raymond Scott. 0:01:26.755 --> 0:01:28.755 He wasn't in the jazz books, he wasn't in the 0:01:28.755 --> 0:01:32.235 classical books, he wasn't in the pop books. I was 0:01:32.275 --> 0:01:34.035 kind of mystify he was kind of a mystery man. 0:01:36.075 --> 0:01:39.115 He was stuck until his friend found Scott in a 0:01:39.155 --> 0:01:43.515 phone book. He was still alive, living in California, Jews. 0:01:43.555 --> 0:01:45.395 It made a phone call and then he got on 0:01:45.435 --> 0:01:49.395 a plane and flew across the country. By then Scott 0:01:49.435 --> 0:01:52.115 was in his eighties. He'd had a few strokes and 0:01:52.155 --> 0:01:54.875 he couldn't speak. He would rest in the back of 0:01:54.915 --> 0:01:57.875 a dingy old ranch house with the heat turned all 0:01:57.915 --> 0:02:00.435 the way up and a humidifier on full blast, so 0:02:00.475 --> 0:02:02.995 there was a kind of heavy fog all around. His 0:02:03.035 --> 0:02:05.315 wife was taking care of him, but she also kept 0:02:05.315 --> 0:02:07.715 a lot of stray animals. There was a dog with 0:02:07.755 --> 0:02:11.315 paralyzed hind legs dragging itself for a and a lifetime's 0:02:11.315 --> 0:02:13.275 worth of stuff piled everywhere. 0:02:13.995 --> 0:02:17.155 They were old rusted tape decks. There were wires, They 0:02:17.195 --> 0:02:20.795 were reels of tape. There were seventy eight r PM discs, 0:02:20.835 --> 0:02:23.755 many of them broken, some of them on shelves old 0:02:24.195 --> 0:02:31.955 magazines of electronic industry publications parts catalogs. This is some 0:02:31.995 --> 0:02:34.395 of them, dating back to the nineteen forties and fifties. 0:02:35.515 --> 0:02:39.155 I should say this story spooky as it is, it's 0:02:39.235 --> 0:02:42.115 kind of my dream. I'm been out of Haffrey and 0:02:42.155 --> 0:02:44.715 I've produced this podcast for the last few years, and 0:02:44.755 --> 0:02:47.835 I'm hosting a season of six episodes now, which more 0:02:47.875 --> 0:02:51.555 on that later. All my life, I've written about history 0:02:51.675 --> 0:02:55.555 and made music. To find a secret, hidden archive full 0:02:55.595 --> 0:02:59.475 of strange musical electronics. I can imagine almost nothing better 0:03:00.195 --> 0:03:03.515 to know through artifacts what someone else once knew, something 0:03:03.595 --> 0:03:07.595 lost because the records and papers and magazines that Choose 0:03:07.635 --> 0:03:12.475 had found told a story. Scott had been one of 0:03:12.555 --> 0:03:15.515 the most famous musicians of the twentieth century. He'd been 0:03:15.555 --> 0:03:18.635 on TV every week for a long time, in all 0:03:18.675 --> 0:03:22.075 the big magazines and films with the movie stars, but 0:03:22.915 --> 0:03:24.435 almost nobody remembered him now. 0:03:24.955 --> 0:03:30.835 And I saw Raymond's entire life's work spread out between 0:03:30.835 --> 0:03:37.195 a leaky guest shed, a garage, some outbuildings on the 0:03:37.235 --> 0:03:38.595 property in Van NY's. 0:03:39.355 --> 0:03:43.235 How could somebody so famous be so forgotten? But something 0:03:43.235 --> 0:03:46.035 else didn't make sense either. There are all these old 0:03:46.075 --> 0:03:49.275 machines and tools strewn about with the rusty edges, And 0:03:49.355 --> 0:03:52.755 in the corner of the guest shed covered in dust, 0:03:53.075 --> 0:03:56.355 Choose It saw a huge hunk of metal and cased 0:03:56.395 --> 0:03:57.075 in wood. 0:03:57.275 --> 0:04:01.955 Large dusty piece of furniture, a bit like a wooden console. 0:04:01.795 --> 0:04:04.795 But it wasn't furniture. It was a heavy machine with 0:04:04.875 --> 0:04:08.395 wires spilling out, hundreds of switches on a black metal front, 0:04:08.595 --> 0:04:11.955 and wood paneling all around. It looked like the cockpit 0:04:12.075 --> 0:04:14.755 of an airplane, except that some of the switches and 0:04:14.755 --> 0:04:17.755 buttons said things like record and power, and others said 0:04:17.795 --> 0:04:18.675 things like do wa. 0:04:19.355 --> 0:04:20.355 I didn't know what it was. 0:04:22.115 --> 0:04:25.235 Later on, someone helping to sort through Scott's files found 0:04:25.235 --> 0:04:28.915 a contract. It was between Raymond Scott and Motown Records, 0:04:29.275 --> 0:04:33.315 and it detailed a binding, confidential agreement to build that 0:04:33.475 --> 0:04:37.235 machine that choose. It was staring at a machine that 0:04:37.395 --> 0:04:42.915 was meant to write songs, the Electronium Choose. It had 0:04:42.955 --> 0:04:45.475 come out to California because of these twenty five cent 0:04:45.555 --> 0:04:49.115 records he'd gotten obsessed with. It was honestly pretty random, 0:04:49.355 --> 0:04:52.555 but somehow he'd stumbled on one of the strangest stories 0:04:52.595 --> 0:04:53.915 in the history of technology. 0:04:54.715 --> 0:04:55.555 How did it work? 0:04:56.395 --> 0:04:59.675 That's the voice of Brian Keihu, one time keyboardist for 0:04:59.675 --> 0:05:03.715 The Who, Fiona Apple, producer, Beatles historian, and one of 0:05:03.715 --> 0:05:06.115 the people for whom this machine has become now a 0:05:06.195 --> 0:05:10.555 kind of holy grail because it makes no sense. Raymond 0:05:10.555 --> 0:05:13.595 Scott began building this thing in the nineteen fifties, and 0:05:13.635 --> 0:05:17.075 it was a kind of mechanical early artificial intelligence that 0:05:17.235 --> 0:05:21.395 actually worked. We're freaked out about chat GPT now. This 0:05:21.475 --> 0:05:24.275 thing was built in secret at a major studio in 0:05:24.315 --> 0:05:27.835 the nineteen seventies. Michael Jackson used to watch it work, 0:05:28.435 --> 0:05:30.395 and nobody now can figure out how to get it 0:05:30.435 --> 0:05:34.555 to work again. In the years between chooses stumbling upon 0:05:34.635 --> 0:05:37.835 the electronium in that Rundown ranch house, and today a 0:05:37.835 --> 0:05:40.435 lot of people have gotten involved in preserving the machine. 0:05:40.475 --> 0:05:43.835 We're bringing it back to life in some fashion. Brian Keyhu, 0:05:44.155 --> 0:05:47.635 but also Mark Mothersbaugh, the lead singer of Devo gat 0:05:47.675 --> 0:05:50.955 Ye the pop star, and teams of engineers and programmers 0:05:50.995 --> 0:05:54.355 and musicians from all around the world because it turns 0:05:54.395 --> 0:05:56.675 out that the man behind it knew how to make 0:05:56.755 --> 0:05:59.675 music like no one else, and they want to hear 0:05:59.715 --> 0:06:05.675 it again. Welcome to Season four of The Last Archive, 0:06:06.395 --> 0:06:08.275 the show about how we know what we know, how 0:06:08.355 --> 0:06:10.755 we used to know things, and why it seems sometimes 0:06:10.835 --> 0:06:14.795 lately is if we don't know anything at all. This 0:06:14.915 --> 0:06:18.835 episode is about that machine and its inventor, Raymond Scott, 0:06:19.795 --> 0:06:22.315 not just because Scott is the most famous composer of 0:06:22.355 --> 0:06:24.635 the twentieth century that most people have never heard of, 0:06:25.555 --> 0:06:27.475 But because I think his life traces one of the 0:06:27.515 --> 0:06:31.235 biggest stories about truth in our world today, the attempt 0:06:31.275 --> 0:06:40.235 to define the difference between man and machine. 0:06:43.595 --> 0:06:46.235 Remarks before Harrison's down, he is now setting down. 0:06:46.635 --> 0:06:49.075 There's another reason I want to spend some time with Scott. 0:06:50.275 --> 0:06:52.235 He is making himself comfortable. 0:06:52.595 --> 0:06:56.155 He recorded his whole life and begin there he goes, 0:06:56.435 --> 0:06:59.035 which made for some fun research. 0:07:03.115 --> 0:07:03.675 At all. 0:07:08.235 --> 0:07:10.835 Raymond Scott was born in Brooklyn in nineteen oh eight. 0:07:11.395 --> 0:07:15.115 His parents named him Harry Warno. His father had sailed 0:07:15.115 --> 0:07:17.715 from Russia to New York two years earlier on a 0:07:17.795 --> 0:07:21.675 ship called America. Sometime after Scott was born, his parents 0:07:21.715 --> 0:07:24.715 bought a music store in Brooklyn in Brownsville, a small 0:07:24.755 --> 0:07:27.995 Jewish neighborhood. They lived in the two floor apartment above 0:07:28.035 --> 0:07:32.595 their shop, surrounded by music and sound machines. Scott especially 0:07:32.715 --> 0:07:35.675 loved the phone. Sometimes he'd make prank calls. 0:07:42.355 --> 0:07:43.115 Please don't forget. 0:07:45.795 --> 0:07:48.515 Scott was growing up in an in between time, a 0:07:48.555 --> 0:07:50.755 mismatch of the world we know now. In the world 0:07:50.795 --> 0:07:53.995 of the nineteenth century, the electrified subway was brand new 0:07:53.995 --> 0:07:56.355 then the year Scott was born. It had made its 0:07:56.395 --> 0:07:59.195 way out to Brooklyn, but the gas street lamps in 0:07:59.235 --> 0:08:02.475 Brownsville were still lit every night by a lamplighter. There 0:08:02.515 --> 0:08:04.795 were chickens in the street, the smell of the sea 0:08:04.835 --> 0:08:08.635 out over Canarsi, candy shops and tenements, hot spiced corn, 0:08:08.715 --> 0:08:11.395 beef in the Delis Briany, half sour pickles in the 0:08:11.435 --> 0:08:16.235 Jewish market, farms in Saltwater. It felt like the old country. 0:08:16.715 --> 0:08:18.075 It felt like the ends of the earth. 0:08:20.795 --> 0:08:24.235 It was a lack a little village. It was a neighborhood. 0:08:24.835 --> 0:08:27.835 Pearls Imni Winters one of the girls from the neighborhood. 0:08:28.195 --> 0:08:31.195 Later on she and Scott got married, and she's all 0:08:31.195 --> 0:08:34.355 over Scott's recordings. Jus It, who never got over his 0:08:34.435 --> 0:08:37.635 obsession with Raymond Scott, interviewed her with a colleague just 0:08:37.635 --> 0:08:38.755 a little before she died. 0:08:39.195 --> 0:08:41.795 I used to go into the music store, you know, 0:08:41.915 --> 0:08:43.595 to buy music when I was a kid. 0:08:45.515 --> 0:08:48.035 That music shop is where I think the dream of 0:08:48.075 --> 0:08:51.795 the songwriting machine began. It was a snapshot of everything 0:08:51.795 --> 0:08:54.435 that was changing in music in the early nineteen hundreds. 0:08:54.915 --> 0:08:57.315 For centuries. If you wanted to hear music in your house, 0:08:57.555 --> 0:08:59.715 someone in your family needed to know how to play. 0:09:00.315 --> 0:09:03.595 For a while, buying a song meant buying sheet music 0:09:03.915 --> 0:09:07.875 bound together in little pamphlets. But later in the nineteenth century, 0:09:08.115 --> 0:09:11.155 technologies that could capture in he produced sound were invented, 0:09:11.555 --> 0:09:14.675 and by the start of the twentieth century, mechanical music 0:09:14.795 --> 0:09:17.595 was taking off. Suddenly you didn't need to know somebody 0:09:17.595 --> 0:09:19.795 who could play to listen to music. You could listen 0:09:19.835 --> 0:09:23.835 on records, wax cylinders, the radio. Scott was obsessed with 0:09:23.875 --> 0:09:26.035 these machines and the music that came out of them. 0:09:26.755 --> 0:09:30.115 He even started an amateur home radio station so he 0:09:30.155 --> 0:09:34.235 could make broadcasts from his bedroom to the living room. 0:09:34.395 --> 0:09:37.915 You need to tell me that's recording now, Oh my god, 0:09:37.995 --> 0:09:38.595 what the fuck that? 0:09:39.715 --> 0:09:41.995 Even as a kid, he was always working on something. 0:09:42.435 --> 0:09:45.675 He'd dangled microphones out the window to record conversations on 0:09:45.715 --> 0:09:48.795 the street or the neighbor. Practicing piano, he would hang 0:09:48.835 --> 0:09:51.835 around the music shop with his dad, tinkering and watching 0:09:51.995 --> 0:09:55.075 not just how music was made, but how it was sold, 0:09:55.275 --> 0:09:58.715 what sold, and how it got reproduced. And there was 0:09:58.715 --> 0:10:03.555 one machine in particular that he became fascinated by. 0:10:03.835 --> 0:10:06.675 He told me that he taught himself to play the piano. 0:10:07.715 --> 0:10:10.795 With the play a piano and I guess that's as 0:10:10.915 --> 0:10:11.915 he first started. 0:10:12.915 --> 0:10:16.595 The player piano. You've probably seen one before in a 0:10:16.635 --> 0:10:19.915 saloon in an old Western, you know, when someone gets shot, 0:10:20.275 --> 0:10:23.675 falls on the piano and it starts playing itself. That's 0:10:23.675 --> 0:10:26.555 the player piano, a piano that plays as if there 0:10:26.555 --> 0:10:29.355 were a ghost of the keyboard. Songs were sold as 0:10:29.395 --> 0:10:32.275 scrolls of paper with little holes punched out for each note, 0:10:32.395 --> 0:10:35.955 a set of mechanical instructions for the piano. The result 0:10:36.235 --> 0:10:39.435 you could hear nearly any song in your home, even 0:10:39.475 --> 0:10:41.475 if you had no idea how to play it yourself. 0:10:42.115 --> 0:10:44.755 Scott loved the piano in the shop. He'd take a 0:10:44.875 --> 0:10:48.595 role and probably play it as slowly as possible, fitting 0:10:48.675 --> 0:10:51.315 his little fingers to the keys as they press themselves down, 0:10:52.075 --> 0:10:57.395 learning by machine. Most people these days think of the 0:10:57.435 --> 0:11:00.675 player piano as a novelty or a gimmick. But I 0:11:00.715 --> 0:11:03.035 want to spend a minute with it here because it's 0:11:03.075 --> 0:11:05.835 a big part not just of music history, but of 0:11:05.875 --> 0:11:10.075 automation history. We tend to think of automation as man 0:11:10.155 --> 0:11:13.555 versus robot factory lines and coal mines, but the player 0:11:13.555 --> 0:11:16.115 piano was a kind of robot two one We often 0:11:16.155 --> 0:11:21.515 forget about but an early, massively influential one that foreshadowed 0:11:21.635 --> 0:11:26.435 so much of what was to come. When Scott was 0:11:26.475 --> 0:11:28.675 a kid, people thought the player piano would be the 0:11:28.715 --> 0:11:32.115 future of music. There were hundreds of thousands of them 0:11:32.235 --> 0:11:36.955 sold each year in millions of song roles. By nineteen nineteen, 0:11:37.155 --> 0:11:39.915 when Scott was eleven, there were more player pianos being 0:11:39.995 --> 0:11:44.955 sold than regular pianos. It wasn't just sales, though. Copyright 0:11:44.995 --> 0:11:47.115 laws in the United States were built around the player 0:11:47.115 --> 0:11:50.195 piano and the record player an equal part. You can 0:11:50.275 --> 0:11:53.675 draw a straight line from player piano roles to punch 0:11:53.755 --> 0:11:57.675 cards and the first computer programs, and people made all 0:11:57.755 --> 0:12:00.675 kinds of player pianos. What you're listening to now is 0:12:00.715 --> 0:12:03.235 a special kind of player piano role that could capture 0:12:03.275 --> 0:12:06.595 all the subtleties of a human performance. This one was 0:12:06.595 --> 0:12:09.955 recorded by the composer WC and reproduced decades after or 0:12:09.955 --> 0:12:14.275 his death. By machine, That's what Scott was learning in 0:12:14.315 --> 0:12:17.635 his family's music shop, role by role, not just to 0:12:17.715 --> 0:12:20.435 play like a machine, but to wonder at all the 0:12:20.515 --> 0:12:28.875 magical things machines suddenly could do. When I was trying 0:12:28.955 --> 0:12:31.115 to understand how Scott grew up, I read up on 0:12:31.195 --> 0:12:34.755 his neighborhood, and in one memoir I found a particular 0:12:34.795 --> 0:12:38.115 detail that snapped it all into view. The drug store 0:12:38.195 --> 0:12:40.315 just down the street from Scott had a poster in 0:12:40.315 --> 0:12:43.835 the window. It was titled the Human Factory, and it 0:12:43.955 --> 0:12:45.755 imagined a person as if they were a kind of 0:12:45.915 --> 0:12:50.635 complex machine, with all these little engineers inside. Scott must 0:12:50.675 --> 0:12:53.995 have passed that poster plenty of times. He had dreams 0:12:54.035 --> 0:12:57.035 of becoming like a machine himself, attaching motors to his 0:12:57.075 --> 0:12:59.515 hands so he could play the piano faster, the kind 0:12:59.555 --> 0:13:03.875 of way only a player piano could. Everywhere that line 0:13:03.875 --> 0:13:09.235 between man and machine was beginning to blur, but there 0:13:09.275 --> 0:13:13.035 was one place where the difference was unmistakable. A machine 0:13:13.395 --> 0:13:17.875 never made mistakes. The song sounded the same every single time, 0:13:18.355 --> 0:13:20.355 and to Scott, that was the ideal. 0:13:21.235 --> 0:13:25.475 The struggle between being a musician and an engineer was 0:13:26.035 --> 0:13:31.675 very real for him. He just loved equipment. Mock was 0:13:31.715 --> 0:13:35.195 the one insisted that he go to Julia. I don't 0:13:35.195 --> 0:13:36.315 think he wanted to. 0:13:36.835 --> 0:13:41.475 That choice, music or engineering. It set the chorus for 0:13:41.555 --> 0:13:45.835 Scott's entire life. Because Scott never could give up on engineering. 0:13:46.195 --> 0:13:48.635 But his brother, who was a rising star in music, 0:13:48.955 --> 0:13:51.555 saw that he had a gift for composing that almost 0:13:51.555 --> 0:13:54.315 no one else did. He got Scott a job as 0:13:54.355 --> 0:13:57.875 the pianist for the CBS Radio Orchestra, and immediately Scott 0:13:57.915 --> 0:14:00.755 began to get noticed. He was anxious that people would 0:14:00.755 --> 0:14:02.675 think he only had the job because of his brother, 0:14:03.155 --> 0:14:06.355 So Harry Warno flipped through the phone book until he 0:14:06.395 --> 0:14:09.515 found a name he liked, Raymond Scott, a name he 0:14:09.515 --> 0:14:12.595 also chose because it sounded less Jewish and he was 0:14:12.635 --> 0:14:16.395 always anxious about that. He played his piano, he wrote 0:14:16.395 --> 0:14:19.795 his songs, and he kept his engineering passion more as 0:14:19.835 --> 0:14:24.275 a hobby. CBS was a good situation except for one thing. 0:14:25.155 --> 0:14:28.435 He was always playing standards songs that people knew they 0:14:28.595 --> 0:14:31.115 liked and had heard a million times already. 0:14:31.195 --> 0:14:33.995 He said that he wanted to write music that people 0:14:34.035 --> 0:14:37.155 would like the first time they heard it. He asked 0:14:37.155 --> 0:14:39.955 his brother Mark if he could put together a band. 0:14:40.275 --> 0:14:42.355 He wanted to put together a six piece band with 0:14:42.435 --> 0:14:43.275 himself in it. 0:14:46.475 --> 0:14:50.035 Mark said yes. Scott started hunting for five musicians who 0:14:50.035 --> 0:14:53.115 could do exactly what he wanted. What he wanted was 0:14:53.195 --> 0:14:55.715 music with a spark that could form a connection with 0:14:55.755 --> 0:14:58.755 a listener immediately out of nowhere. He had a couple 0:14:58.875 --> 0:15:02.275 songs ready, so he found his guys rehearsed, and then 0:15:02.275 --> 0:15:05.995 he got an audience together in CBS's Studio B. They 0:15:05.995 --> 0:15:09.315 dimmed the lights all the way and they began to play. 0:15:11.555 --> 0:15:13.355 A journalist wrote about it a year later. 0:15:14.435 --> 0:15:17.595 Nobody who attended that premiere eighteen months ago was likely 0:15:17.675 --> 0:15:18.315 to forget it. 0:15:18.755 --> 0:15:20.395 Out of the darkness, there came. 0:15:20.275 --> 0:15:25.515 A thin wailing note, barely masking a slow, suggestive thumping 0:15:25.595 --> 0:15:26.315 on the drums. 0:15:26.795 --> 0:15:28.555 When it was over, the audience rose. 0:15:28.355 --> 0:15:29.635 To its feet and cheered. 0:15:30.115 --> 0:15:33.395 Fan Mail poured in, Who was this man, Scott? 0:15:33.555 --> 0:15:34.635 Where was he from? 0:15:34.995 --> 0:15:37.115 Where had he been all these years? 0:15:38.635 --> 0:15:44.475 They created such a generated such an amazing listener reaction 0:15:45.195 --> 0:15:50.275 that they immediately got a recording contract with the Master label, 0:15:50.555 --> 0:15:54.795 which was owned by Irving Mills, who was Duke Ellington's manager. 0:15:55.595 --> 0:15:58.835 The response was unprecedented, and admitted. 0:15:58.515 --> 0:16:00.235 I'm going to take you right on in, but we're 0:16:00.235 --> 0:16:02.035 going to have a very entertaining visit with one of 0:16:02.035 --> 0:16:02.355 the years. 0:16:02.395 --> 0:16:04.475 Then faith no music or good doing to get in there. 0:16:05.155 --> 0:16:08.435 Scott was trying to sell a perfect musical package. He 0:16:08.515 --> 0:16:10.955 said he went out to clubs to track which tempos 0:16:10.995 --> 0:16:13.475 made people get up and dance. He had a whole 0:16:13.475 --> 0:16:16.395 thing about names. He called his band of six people 0:16:16.435 --> 0:16:20.755 a quintet, not a sextet. He even renamed his saxophone player. 0:16:20.835 --> 0:16:22.195 And hears the youngest of all group. 0:16:22.435 --> 0:16:25.075 His name was originally Dave Harris, but now it's Eric 0:16:25.115 --> 0:16:26.355 Hoek Eric Kwak. 0:16:26.435 --> 0:16:27.515 Then it's an interesting name. 0:16:27.755 --> 0:16:29.355 Yeah, that's Raymond's idea of a name. 0:16:30.315 --> 0:16:32.555 He wouldn't write his music down. He'd just play it 0:16:32.595 --> 0:16:34.675 at the piano for his quintet and then have them 0:16:34.675 --> 0:16:36.515 play their parts back till they could do it right, 0:16:37.115 --> 0:16:37.995 note for note. 0:16:38.195 --> 0:16:40.595 And they called the fellows that marvelous fears and memories. 0:16:40.635 --> 0:16:42.875 And they never to get a composition to Wednesday signed it. 0:16:43.515 --> 0:16:46.235 Once they had it down, it rarely changed. And that 0:16:46.475 --> 0:16:48.875 was just how Scott wanted it. If he could have 0:16:48.915 --> 0:16:51.955 replaced each of his musicians' minds with the scroll of music, 0:16:52.395 --> 0:16:53.355 he probably would have. 0:16:53.955 --> 0:16:58.155 He didn't know how to handle human relationships too well. 0:16:58.555 --> 0:17:03.155 They called him a bully, they called him a bastard, 0:17:03.515 --> 0:17:05.995 they called him all kinds of names because he was 0:17:06.195 --> 0:17:09.355 trying to make them play better. One of his musicians 0:17:09.475 --> 0:17:14.195 once nobody worked with Raymond. Everybody worked under Raymond. Johnny Williams, 0:17:14.195 --> 0:17:16.795 the drummer, said, we were We hated every minute of 0:17:16.835 --> 0:17:19.115 it because we were being told what to play exaid. 0:17:19.155 --> 0:17:21.195 At the same time that we hated it, we were 0:17:21.195 --> 0:17:22.955 making more money than anybody in town. 0:17:23.835 --> 0:17:26.715 The music was like jazz, but without the improvisation or 0:17:26.755 --> 0:17:31.115 the looseness. Tightly manage the price of mechanical perfection. 0:17:31.635 --> 0:17:38.435 Well, he rehearsed, I want to cut that, and he rehearsed. 0:17:38.155 --> 0:17:39.795 Keepon cutting way the anper the cut. 0:17:39.955 --> 0:17:41.115 He rehearsed keepers from. 0:17:40.955 --> 0:17:43.195 Getting accocated by saying, temple do it that way without 0:17:43.195 --> 0:17:43.795 talking about it. 0:17:43.795 --> 0:17:46.675 And he was driving his musicians crazy because they would say, 0:17:46.875 --> 0:17:48.915 nobody needs to rehearse this much. 0:17:52.035 --> 0:17:55.795 Scott held his musicians to an impossible standard. He wanted 0:17:55.835 --> 0:17:59.115 them to play like machines. But it's hard to argue 0:17:59.115 --> 0:18:03.875 with the results. His rise was stratospheric. Stravinsky, Cab Calloway, 0:18:03.955 --> 0:18:07.235 Duke Ellington, they were all Raymond Scott fans. In the 0:18:07.275 --> 0:18:10.515 nineteen forties, he had his own radio show, The Raymond 0:18:10.555 --> 0:18:14.075 Scott Show. He became the music director of CBS Radio, 0:18:14.595 --> 0:18:18.475 where he led a racially integrated radio orchestra. This, I 0:18:18.515 --> 0:18:22.035 think not because he was especially progressive but because all 0:18:22.035 --> 0:18:23.515 he cared about was the music. 0:18:24.355 --> 0:18:26.995 This, in so many ways explains why he was working 0:18:26.995 --> 0:18:28.555 with machines late in life. 0:18:28.795 --> 0:18:31.275 Oh yeah, his best friend. 0:18:32.155 --> 0:18:33.955 The machines were his best friends. 0:18:34.955 --> 0:18:35.195 To me. 0:18:35.395 --> 0:18:38.155 When I heard this story, I kept thinking about Scott 0:18:38.195 --> 0:18:41.355 as a kid at the player piano. When that machine 0:18:41.435 --> 0:18:45.355 was invented, it scared people. Two years before Raymond Scott 0:18:45.435 --> 0:18:48.915 was born, John Phillips Sussa, the famous composer, wrote an 0:18:48.995 --> 0:18:52.835 essay called the Menace of Mechanical Music. The whole course 0:18:52.875 --> 0:18:56.155 of music has been the expression of soul, states he wrote. 0:18:56.195 --> 0:18:58.555 And now in this twentieth century come these talking and 0:18:58.595 --> 0:19:02.555 playing machines to reduce the expression to a mathematical system 0:19:02.635 --> 0:19:06.315 of megaphones, wheels, cogs, discs, cylinders, in all manner of 0:19:06.355 --> 0:19:10.195 revolving things. The player piano became a dark sny of 0:19:10.195 --> 0:19:13.635 modern life. When Kurt Vonnegut wrote his first novel about 0:19:13.635 --> 0:19:17.195 a dystopian America run by engineers in their automatic machinery, 0:19:17.555 --> 0:19:22.275 he called it player piano. By the time Raymond Scott 0:19:22.315 --> 0:19:26.795 was getting famous, those fears about mechanical music were everywhere. 0:19:27.275 --> 0:19:36.195 Same story everywhere, new machine, high speed production, fewer jobs. 0:19:34.995 --> 0:19:36.715 And ten men for every job it. 0:19:36.675 --> 0:19:37.395 Can be had. 0:19:38.115 --> 0:19:42.995 Scott was fighting a classic battle, mechanical perfection against human error. 0:19:43.515 --> 0:19:47.395 What was at stake were free will agency the human soul. 0:19:48.355 --> 0:19:50.995 That conflict was one of the main rhythms of twentieth 0:19:50.995 --> 0:19:54.555 century history, and Scott was like a leading melody and 0:19:54.595 --> 0:19:59.875 then he hit a wrong note. That story. After the 0:19:59.915 --> 0:20:07.635 break in the nineteen forties, Raymond Scott was properly famous. 0:20:08.235 --> 0:20:10.115 He and his wife Pearl packed up their kids and 0:20:10.195 --> 0:20:12.995 his equipment and moved to a big house out in Tuckaho, 0:20:13.115 --> 0:20:13.515 New York. 0:20:13.995 --> 0:20:16.755 He had a wonderful apartment and said he fully moved 0:20:16.795 --> 0:20:20.715 from there. Of course, he was a Ham radio operator. 0:20:21.435 --> 0:20:23.635 He wanted to be where he'd have good reception. 0:20:24.475 --> 0:20:26.955 I kind of love that he finally had enough money 0:20:26.955 --> 0:20:29.075 to buy a big house. But actually the only reason 0:20:29.115 --> 0:20:30.875 he was moving out of the city was so that 0:20:30.915 --> 0:20:34.435 he could have better Ham radio reception. He was tinkering 0:20:34.475 --> 0:20:38.195 with his machines again, not just microphones in high fi equipment, 0:20:38.315 --> 0:20:41.675 but new sorts of instruments. The problem was, electronics was 0:20:41.715 --> 0:20:44.195 not a casual hobby. In the late nineteen thirties and 0:20:44.235 --> 0:20:44.995 early forties. 0:20:45.715 --> 0:20:48.395 He saw an electronic parts catalog and he wanted to 0:20:48.515 --> 0:20:50.195 order every part in the catalog. 0:20:50.955 --> 0:20:54.555 Stan Warno is Raymond Scott and pearls Imni Winter's son. 0:20:55.235 --> 0:20:58.875 He made a great documentary about his father called Deconstructing Dad. 0:20:59.275 --> 0:21:00.875 I visited him last winter. 0:21:01.035 --> 0:21:02.595 And he thought, the only way he's going to make 0:21:02.675 --> 0:21:05.515 enough money to do that is to form a big band. 0:21:05.915 --> 0:21:07.595 And so he did form a big band and went 0:21:07.635 --> 0:21:08.315 out on the road. 0:21:10.995 --> 0:21:14.075 It's more thirty in New York and time for CBS 0:21:14.115 --> 0:21:17.515 to present The Raymond Scott Show across the continent and 0:21:17.595 --> 0:21:20.875 later to the whole world by shortwave come song Hits 0:21:20.875 --> 0:21:24.475 of the Day, starring America's number one composer with a band. 0:21:24.915 --> 0:21:26.635 Here he is Raymond Scott. 0:21:28.715 --> 0:21:31.115 In the nineteen thirties, Scott's hits seem to have been 0:21:31.155 --> 0:21:34.675 about the music first, but in the forties his focus 0:21:34.675 --> 0:21:37.635 seems to have shifted from writing great songs to making 0:21:37.675 --> 0:21:40.275 as much money from his music as possible so he 0:21:40.275 --> 0:21:43.395 could fuel his mechanical hobby. It was like his own 0:21:43.515 --> 0:21:46.435 version of his dad's music shop. Music sold any way 0:21:46.475 --> 0:21:49.755 you like, but a big band needed a singer. He 0:21:49.835 --> 0:21:52.395 was always churning through them, always on the lookout for 0:21:52.475 --> 0:21:56.555 someone perfect. And that's how he met Marjorie Chandler. 0:21:57.275 --> 0:22:01.315 We were in Chicago and we took an apartment there. 0:22:02.315 --> 0:22:04.675 Scott heard through one of the band's managers that there 0:22:04.715 --> 0:22:07.315 was a young girl from Canada he should meet. She'd 0:22:07.315 --> 0:22:10.115 sung in a big radio contest in one first place. 0:22:10.675 --> 0:22:13.315 She was about thirteen years old, and her voice was amazing. 0:22:14.115 --> 0:22:17.555 Scott decided to take her on as a student full time. 0:22:18.315 --> 0:22:24.315 He thought she had real potential, and so she came 0:22:24.475 --> 0:22:26.395 to live with us. 0:22:26.395 --> 0:22:29.315 Marjorie's family sent her to live at the house in Tuckahoe. 0:22:29.795 --> 0:22:32.915 According to Pearl, she and Scott were like surrogate parents, 0:22:33.395 --> 0:22:38.115 except Scott and Marjorie spent endless hours practicing. It was 0:22:38.155 --> 0:22:41.875 like with his quintete, except Chandler was a kid away 0:22:41.875 --> 0:22:45.315