0:00

Hi, it's well as this week we're

0:02

bringing you a story that we think

0:05

you're really going to like. An episode

0:07

from the show. The Last Archive from

0:09

Pushkin Industries. The Last Archive. like so

0:11

many episodes of Decoder Ring is all

0:13

about diving into history to understand our

0:16

present, digging into the past, better comprehend

0:18

what's going on right now. It's all

0:20

about how we know what we know

0:22

or what we think we now, and

0:24

why it can seem like we don't

0:27

know anything at all anymore. This episode

0:29

we're bringing you today is. Hosted by

0:31

Ben Not Half Frame, it's about a

0:33

very early kind of artificial intelligence. a

0:35

machine that was built to write songs.

0:38

It was created by a Madcap inventor,

0:40

a musician who was hugely successful in

0:42

his own day, and who labored for

0:44

years eventually and Motown Records to figure

0:47

out how to get a machine to

0:49

create music. It's a great, relevant yarn,

0:51

and I bet you'll be thinking about

0:54

it for a long time. I

0:56

know I have. So. Here's the

0:58

last archive episode called Player

1:00

Piano. You. Can and should

1:02

go follow the last archive war

1:05

ever. You listen to podcasts, About.

1:08

Thirty years ago, a maimed or when

1:10

choosing, encountered one of the strangest machines.

1:12

Almost nobody had ever heard of. Forty.

1:16

I was broke. His. Kind of a

1:18

professional failure. Choose It was

1:21

a Dj for a small community radio station

1:23

in New Jersey. A

1:25

friend of his had put him on

1:27

to a musician named Raymond Scott, one

1:29

of the most famous musicians of the

1:31

early twentieth century, who had somehow been

1:33

completely lost to history. These records that

1:35

were twenty five cents a pop and

1:37

news record stores back then and you

1:39

didn't even the little bit have been.

1:41

they had him under the bins. Choose

1:44

It Loves Scots music and he began to

1:46

get drawn into the mystery of it all.

1:49

Who was this guy? He. Was obsessed.

1:52

But. His research kept that under. I

1:54

went to a library and went looking

1:56

through music history books and there's almost

1:59

no mention of. Raymond got he was in

2:01

in the jazz books, he wasn't in the classical

2:03

books, he wasn't in the plot books. Are

2:06

going to mystified was kind of the mystery man. He.

2:10

Was stuck. Until his friend found

2:12

Scott in a phone book. He

2:14

was still alive living in California.

2:17

Choose. It made a phone call. And. Then he

2:19

got on a plane and flew across the country.

2:22

By. Then Scott was in his eighties. He'd.

2:25

Had a few strokes and he couldn't speak.

2:27

He would rests in the back of a dingy

2:29

old ranch house with the he'd turn all the

2:32

way up and a humidifier on full blast. so

2:34

there is a kind of heavy fog all around.

2:37

His. Wife is taking care of him, but

2:39

she also kept a lot of stray animals.

2:41

There was a dog with paralyzed hind legs

2:43

dragging itself around. And. A lifetime's

2:45

worth of stuff piled everywhere. There.

2:48

Were sold. Rusted tape decks.

2:50

They were wires. They were

2:52

real sex tape. The Route:

2:55

Seventy eight rpm disks, many

2:57

them broken, some of them

2:59

on shelves. Old magazines of

3:02

electronics industry, publications, parts catalogues,

3:05

This it as some of them dating back to

3:07

the nineteen forties and fifties. I

3:10

should say this story spooky as

3:12

it is. It's. Kind of my dream.

3:14

I'm ben out of have free and I've

3:17

produced this podcast for the last few years

3:19

and I'm hosting a season of six episodes

3:21

now which more on that later. All

3:23

my life I've written about history and

3:26

made music. To. Find a

3:28

secret hidden archive full of strange

3:30

musical electronics. I can imagine almost

3:32

nothing better. To. Know through

3:35

artifacts what someone else once knew. Something.

3:37

Last. Because. The records and

3:39

papers and magazines that choose it sound

3:42

told a story. Scott.

3:46

Had been one of the most famous musicians

3:48

of the twentieth century. He been on Tv

3:50

every week for a long time. In.

3:52

All the big magazines and films of the

3:54

movie stars. But. Almost

3:57

nobody remembered him now. and

3:59

i saw Raymond's entire

4:01

life's work spread

4:04

out between a leaky guest

4:06

shed, a garage,

4:10

some outbuildings on the property in Van

4:12

Nuys. How could somebody

4:14

so famous be so forgotten? But

4:17

something else didn't make sense either. There

4:19

were all these old machines and tools strewn about

4:21

with the rusty edges. And in

4:23

the corner of the guest shed, covered in

4:26

dust, Chuzad saw a

4:28

huge hunk of metal. Encased

4:30

in wood. A large dusty piece of furniture,

4:32

a bit like a wooden

4:34

console. But it wasn't furniture.

4:37

It was a heavy machine with wires spilling

4:39

out, hundreds of switches on a

4:41

black metal front, and wood paneling all around.

4:44

It looked like the cockpit of an airplane,

4:47

except that some of the switches and buttons

4:49

said things like record and power, and others

4:51

said things like Dua. I didn't

4:53

know what it was. Later

4:56

on, someone helping to sort through Scott's

4:58

files found a contract. It

5:00

was between Raymond Scott and Motown

5:02

Records, and it detailed a binding,

5:05

confidential agreement to build that machine

5:07

that Chuzad was staring at. A

5:10

machine that was meant to

5:12

write songs. The Electronium.

5:16

Chuzad had come out to California because

5:18

of these 25-cent records he'd gotten obsessed

5:20

with. It was honestly pretty random, but

5:23

somehow, he'd stumbled on one of the

5:25

strangest stories in the history of technology.

5:28

How did it work? That's the

5:31

voice of Brian Kehoe. One-time

5:33

keyboardist for the who, Fiona Apple

5:35

producer, Beatles historian. And

5:37

one of the people for whom this machine has

5:39

become now a kind of holy grail. Because

5:42

it makes no sense. Raymond

5:44

Scott began building this thing in

5:46

the 1950s, and it was a

5:49

kind of mechanical, early artificial intelligence

5:51

that actually worked. We're freaked

5:53

out about chat GPT now. This

5:55

Thing was built, in secret, at a major studio

5:57

in the 1970s. Michael

6:00

Jackson used to watch it work. And

6:02

nobody now can figure out how to get it to

6:04

work again. In. The

6:06

years between Jews and stumbling upon the Electron

6:09

Am and that run down Ranch House and

6:11

today. A lot of people have gotten

6:13

involved in preserving the machine or bringing it back

6:15

to life in some fashion. Brain.

6:17

Tissue but also Mark Mother's Bar

6:19

the lead singer of D.yea The

6:21

Pop Star in teams of engineers

6:24

and programmers and musicians from all

6:26

around the world. Because. It

6:28

turns out that the man behind it knew how

6:30

to make music like no one else. And.

6:32

They wanna hear it again. Welcome

6:37

to Season for the last Archive the show

6:39

about how we know what we know, how

6:41

we used to know things and why it

6:44

seems sometimes lately is if we don't know

6:46

anything at all. This

6:49

episode is about that machine and it's

6:51

inventor Raymond Scott. Not just because Scott

6:53

is the most famous composer of the

6:55

twentieth century that most people have never

6:57

heard of, that because I think his

6:59

life crisis one of the biggest stories

7:02

about Terms and our world today. The

7:05

attempt to define the difference

7:07

between man and machine. Remarkable.

7:18

How on Earth over! There's another reason

7:20

I want to spend some time with

7:22

Scott. All levels

7:25

of a sudden. He recorded

7:27

his whole life. Goes

7:30

nuts, eat for some research.

7:42

Raymond. Scott was born in Brooklyn and ninety

7:44

know it. Is. Parents named him

7:46

carry war know his father had sailed

7:48

from Russia to New York two years

7:51

earlier on a ship called America. sometime.

7:54

after scott was born his parents bought

7:56

a music store in brooklyn and round

7:58

so small jewish neighborhood They lived

8:00

in the two floor apartment above their

8:02

shop, surrounded by music and sound machines.

8:05

Scott especially loved the phone. Sometimes

8:08

he'd make prank calls. Oh,

8:10

I don't know. Dr. Beck's

8:12

call. I'm going to keep up now. Oh,

8:15

Dr. Beck's one. Please don't forget. Yeah.

8:18

Well, thanks very much. I'm ready. No problem.

8:21

Scott was growing up in an in-between time. A mishmash

8:23

of the world we know now, in the world of

8:25

the 19th century. The electrified subway was

8:27

brand new then. The year Scott was

8:29

born, it had made its way out to Brooklyn. But

8:32

the gas street lamps in Brownsville were still lit

8:34

every night by a lamp lighter. There

8:36

were chickens in the street. The smell of the

8:38

sea out over Canarsie. Candy shops

8:41

and tenements. Hot spiced corned beef

8:43

in the delis. And briny half sour pickles

8:45

in the Jewish market. Farms

8:47

and salt water. It felt like

8:49

the old country. It felt like the ends of

8:51

the earth. It

8:55

was like a little village. It was

8:57

a neighborhood. Pearl's Emmy Winters, one

9:00

of the girls from the neighborhood. Later

9:02

on, she and Scott got married. And

9:04

she's all over Scott's recordings. Chuzut,

9:07

who never got over his obsession with Raymond

9:09

Scott, interviewed her with a colleague. Just

9:11

a little before she died. I used to

9:14

go into the music store, you know, to buy

9:16

music when I was a kid. That

9:20

music shop is where I think the dream

9:22

of the songwriting machine began. It

9:24

was a snapshot of everything that was changing in music

9:26

in the early 1900s. For

9:29

centuries, if you wanted to hear music in your house,

9:31

someone in your family needed to know how to play.

9:34

For a while, buying a song

9:36

meant buying sheet music, bound together

9:38

in little pamphlets. But

9:40

later in the 19th century, technologies that

9:42

could capture and reproduce sound were

9:44

invented. And by the start

9:47

of the 20th century, mechanical music was taking

9:49

off. Suddenly, you didn't need

9:51

to know somebody who could play to listen

9:53

to music. You could listen on records, wax

9:55

cylinders, the radio. Scott Was

9:57

obsessed with these machines and the music that came out

9:59

of them. He even started

10:01

an amateur home radio season. Three can

10:04

make broadcasts from his bedroom to the

10:06

living room. Cabinet

10:09

Record. Fear. Factor.

10:13

Even as a kid, he was

10:15

always working on something to dangle

10:17

microphones out the window to record

10:19

conversations on the street or the

10:21

neighbor practicing piano. You would hang

10:23

around the music shop with his

10:25

dad, tinkering and watching not just

10:27

how music was made out with

10:29

song watson and how I got

10:32

reproduced. There was one machine in

10:34

particular that he became fascinated by.

10:37

They. Told me that he taught himself to

10:40

play the piano. And with the

10:42

player piano and I guess that's how he.

10:44

Is. He first started. The

10:47

player piano. You've. Probably seen

10:49

one before in a saloon in an

10:51

old westerns. You know when someone gets

10:53

shots, falls on a cell and I

10:56

started playing itself? That's the player piano.

10:58

A piano that plays as as they

11:00

were goes to the keyboard. Songs were

11:02

sold as scrolls of paper with little

11:04

holes punched out for each Know a

11:07

set of mechanical instructions for the piano.

11:09

The result? You could hear nearly any

11:11

song in your home even if you

11:13

had no idea how to play it

11:15

yourself. Scott love the piano in the

11:17

shop. He take. A role and

11:19

probably play it as slowly as

11:22

possible. Sitting is little fingers to

11:24

the keys as a press themselves

11:26

down. Learning by machines. Most.

11:30

People these days think of the player piano

11:32

as a novelty. Her gimmick. But

11:34

I. Want to spend a minute with it here? Because.

11:36

It's a big part, not just of music

11:39

history, But. Of Automation History.

11:42

We. Tend to think of automation as me

11:44

inverse robot factory lines and coal mines, but

11:46

the player piano was a kind of robot

11:49

to. When. We often forget about. But.

11:51

In early massively influential one.

11:54

That. Foreshadowed so much of what was to

11:56

come. When

12:00

car was a kid people thought the player piano

12:02

would be the future of music. There

12:04

were hundreds of thousands of them sold each

12:06

year. And. Millions of Song

12:08

rules. By nineteen nineteen

12:10

when Scott was eleven, they were more

12:13

player piano as being sold than regular

12:15

pianos. It wasn't just

12:17

sales though. Copyright laws in the United States

12:19

for built around the player piano and a

12:22

record player in equal part. You.

12:24

Can draw a straight line from

12:26

player piano roles to punch cards

12:28

And the first computer programs and

12:30

people made all kinds of player

12:32

pianos. Where you're listening to now

12:34

is a special kind of player

12:36

piano roll that could capture all

12:38

the subtleties of human performance. This

12:40

one was recorded by the composer

12:42

Wc, and reproduce decades after his

12:44

death by Machine. That's

12:47

what Scott was learning in the same

12:49

with Music Shop role by not just

12:51

to play like a machine but to

12:53

wonder at all to magical things seen

12:55

suddenly could do. When.

13:02

I was trying to understand how Scott

13:04

grew up. I read up on his

13:06

neighborhood and in one memoir I found

13:08

a particular detail that snapped at all.

13:10

Interview. The. Drugstore just down the street

13:12

from Scott. Had a poster in the window.

13:15

It was titled The Human Factory. And

13:18

in imagined a person as if they were

13:20

kind of complex machine. With. All these

13:22

little engineers inside. Scott.

13:24

Has surpassed that poster plenty of times.

13:27

He had dreams of becoming like a machine himself.

13:30

Attaching motors to his hand so we could play

13:32

the piano faster. The. Kind of way only

13:34

a player piano could. Everywhere.

13:37

That. Line between man and machine. Was.

13:39

Beginning to blur. But

13:43

there was one place where

13:45

the difference was unmistakable. The

13:47

machine never made mistakes, the

13:49

song sounded the same every

13:51

single time, and a Scott

13:53

that was the ideal. The

13:55

struggle between being a musician

13:57

and an engineer was said

14:00

very real for him since

14:02

he just loved quip meant

14:04

a mock was the one

14:06

insisted that he thought to

14:08

react. I don't think he

14:10

wanted to that choice. Music.

14:13

Or. Engineering. To set a

14:15

course for Scots entire life. Because.

14:17

Scott never could give up on engineering,

14:20

but his brother who is a rising

14:22

star and music saw that he had

14:24

a gift for composing that almost no

14:26

one else did. Just got a job

14:28

as the pianist for the Cbs Radio

14:30

Orchestra and immediately Scott began to get

14:32

noticed. He was anxious that people think

14:34

he only had the job because of

14:36

his brother. so carry war know flip

14:38

through the phone book to we found

14:40

a name he liked. Raymond Scott. an

14:43

aim he also shows because it sounded less

14:45

to us and he was always anxious about

14:47

that. He played his piano. He.

14:50

Wrote his songs, And. He kept

14:52

his engineering task and more as a hobby. Cbs

14:55

was a good situation except for

14:57

one thing. He was

14:59

always playing standards songs that people knew

15:02

they light and had heard a million

15:04

times already. He said that he

15:06

wanted to write music that people would

15:08

like. First heard he asked his

15:11

brother Mark is he could put together

15:13

dance. He wanted to put together a

15:15

sixty stand with himself. Mark.

15:20

Said yes. Scott. Started hunting

15:22

for five musicians who could do exactly what

15:25

he wanted. What? He wanted was

15:27

music with a spark. That. Could former

15:29

connection with a listener immediately out of

15:31

nowhere. He. Had a couple songs

15:33

ready so he found his guys are Hearst

15:35

and then he got an audience together and

15:38

cbs his studio be they dim the lights

15:40

on the way. got his worth and they

15:42

began to play. A

15:45

journalist wrote about a. Month

15:51

ago was like services are

15:53

sat there came a sin

15:55

wally know fairly must as

15:57

slow since. When

16:01

it was over, the audience rose to its feet

16:03

and cheered. Fan mail poured

16:05

in. Who was this man, Scott? Where

16:07

was he from? Where had

16:09

he been all these years? They

16:13

created such a...generated

16:15

such an amazing listener

16:18

reaction that they

16:20

immediately got a recording contract

16:22

with the master label, which

16:24

was owned by Irving Mills,

16:26

who was Duke Ellington's manager.

16:29

The response was unprecedented. In

16:32

a minute, I'm going to take you right on in. We're

16:34

going to have a very entertaining visit with one of the

16:36

year's sensational musical groups when they get in there. Scott

16:39

was trying to sell a perfect musical package.

16:42

He said he went out to clubs to track which

16:44

tempos made people get up and dance. He

16:47

had a whole thing about names. He

16:49

called his band of six people a quintet, not

16:51

a sextet. He even renamed

16:53

his saxophone player. And he

16:55

is the youngest of all groups. His name

16:57

was originally Dave Harris, but now it's Eric

16:59

Hoeck. Eric Hoeck. Isn't that an interesting name?

17:01

Yeah, that's Raymond's idea of a name. You

17:04

wouldn't write his music down. You'd just play it at

17:06

the piano for his quintet, and then have them play

17:08

their parts back so they could do it right, note

17:11

for note. And because the fellas

17:13

have marvelous ears and memories, they never forget a

17:15

composition to whence they find it.

17:17

Once they had it down, it rarely changed. And

17:20

that was just how Scott wanted it. If

17:22

he could have replaced each of his musicians'

17:24

minds with a scroll of music, he probably

17:26

would have. He didn't know

17:29

how to handle human relationships

17:31

without him. They called him

17:33

a bully. They called him

17:35

a... bastard. They called him all

17:38

kinds of names, because he was

17:40

trying to make them play better.

17:42

One of the musicians once said,

17:44

nobody worked with Raymond. Everybody

17:46

worked under Raymond. Johnny Williams, the drummer,

17:48

said, we hated every minute

17:50

of it because we were being told what to play.

17:52

He said, at the same time that we hated it,

17:55

we were making more money than anybody in town. The

17:58

music was like jazz, but without the improvisation

18:00

or the looseness, tightly managed,

18:02

the price of mechanical

18:04

perfection. He rehearsed, I want

18:07

to cut this, and he rehearsed.

18:12

He kept on cutting, and he had to get to

18:14

the top. He rehearsed. He kept on getting agitated by

18:16

saying simply. He would do it that way without thinking

18:18

about it. He was driving and he was just crazy,

18:20

because they would say, nobody needs to re-imburse much.

18:23

All right. We're going now. All

18:26

right. Scott held his musicians to an

18:28

impossible standard. He wanted them

18:30

to play like machines, but it's

18:32

hard to argue with the results. His

18:34

rise was stratospheric. Stravinsky,

18:37

Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, they

18:39

were all Raymond Scott fans. In

18:41

the 1940s, he had his own radio

18:43

show, the Raymond Scott Show. He

18:46

became the music director of CBS Radio,

18:48

where he led a racially integrated radio

18:50

orchestra. This I think

18:53

not because he was especially progressive, but

18:55

because all he cared about was the

18:57

music. This in

18:59

so many ways explains why he was working with

19:01

machines late in life. Oh,

19:03

yeah. Rather than a musician. They were his best

19:05

friend. The machines were his best friends.

19:09

To me, when I heard this story, I kept

19:11

thinking about Scott as a kid at the player

19:13

piano. When that

19:15

machine was invented, it scared people. Two

19:18

years before Raymond Scott was born,

19:20

John Philip Sousa, the famous composer,

19:22

wrote an essay called The Menace

19:24

of Mechanical Music. The

19:26

whole course of music has been the expression of

19:28

soul states, he wrote. And now

19:31

in this 20th century come these

19:33

talking and playing machines to reduce

19:35

the expression to a mathematical system

19:37

of megaphones, wheels, cogs, discs, cylinders,

19:39

and all manner of revolving things.

19:42

The player piano became a dark symbol of modern

19:44

life. When Kurt Vonnegut

19:46

wrote his first novel about a dystopian

19:48

America run by engineers and their automatic

19:50

machinery, he called it player piano. By

19:55

the time Raymond Scott was getting famous,

19:57

those fears about mechanical music were everywhere.

20:00

were. Same story

20:02

everywhere. New machines,

20:05

high speed production, fewer

20:07

jobs, and ten men

20:09

for every job that can be had. Scott

20:12

was fighting a classic battle, mechanical

20:15

perfection against human error. What

20:17

was at stake were free will,

20:20

agency, the human soul. That

20:22

conflict was one of the main rhythms of

20:25

20th century history, and Scott was like a

20:27

leading melody. And then, he

20:29

hit a wrong note. That

20:33

story after the break. In

20:38

the 1940s, Raymond Scott was properly

20:41

famous. He and his wife

20:43

Pearl packed up their kids and his equipment, and

20:45

moved to a big house out in Tuckahoe, New

20:47

York. He had a wonderful

20:49

apartment, but we moved from there

20:51

because he was a

20:53

ham radio operator. He wanted

20:56

to be where he'd have good reception. I

20:58

kind of love that. He finally had enough money

21:01

to buy a big house, but actually the only reason

21:03

he was moving out of the city was so that

21:05

he could have better ham radio reception. He

21:08

was tinkering with his machines again. Not

21:10

just microphones and hi-fi equipment, but new sorts

21:13

of instruments. Problem was, electronics

21:15

was not a casual hobby in the late 1930s and

21:17

early 40s. He

21:20

saw an electronic parts catalog and he wanted

21:22

to order every part in the catalog. Stan

21:25

Worno is Raymond Scott and Pearl's

21:27

M.D. Winters son. He

21:29

made a great documentary about his father

21:32

called Deconstructing Dad. I visited him

21:34

last winter. And he thought the only

21:36

way he's going to make enough money to do that

21:38

is to form a big band. And so he did

21:40

form a big band and went out on the road.

21:45

It's more 30 in New York, and

21:47

time for CBS to present the Raymond

21:49

Scott Show. Across the continent

21:51

and later to the whole world by

21:53

shortwave comes song hits of the day,

21:55

starring America's number one composer with a

21:58

band. Here he is. Raymond

22:00

Scott. In

22:03

the 1930s, Scott's hits seem to have been

22:05

about the music first. But in

22:07

the 40s, his focus seems to have

22:09

shifted from writing great songs to making

22:11

as much money from his music as

22:13

possible so he could fuel his mechanical

22:15

hobby. It was like his own

22:17

version of his dad's music shop. Music sold

22:19

any way you like. But a big

22:22

band needed a singer. He

22:24

was always turning through them, always on the

22:26

lookout for someone perfect. And

22:28

that's how he met Marjorie Chandler. We

22:31

were in Chicago and we

22:34

took an apartment there. Scott

22:36

heard through one of the band's managers that there was

22:38

a young girl from Canada he should meet. She'd

22:41

sung in a big radio contest in one

22:43

first place. She was about 13

22:45

years old and her voice was amazing. Scott

22:48

decided to take her on as a student. Full

22:51

time. He thought she had

22:53

real potential. And so

22:56

she came

22:58

to live with us. Marjorie's

23:00

family sent her to live at the house

23:02

in Tuckahoe. According to Pearl,

23:04

she and Scott were like surrogate parents,

23:07

except Scott and Marjorie spent

23:09

endless hours practicing. It

23:12

was like with his quintet, except

23:14

Chandler was a kid away from her

23:16

parents. This tape is

23:18

likely from later on. But even then,

23:20

you can hear how exacting he is. He's

23:24

a man. Scott

23:40

gave her a new name, Dorothy

23:42

Collins. She'd go to

23:44

school. She'd wander around the big

23:46

house and write her name Marjorie over

23:48

and over again. Then she'd go

23:51

back to practicing. It's

23:54

changing quality like man. It

23:59

was a bad. Breaking Regimen. But

24:01

she was an incredible talent. And.

24:05

As she got older and

24:07

better C B D he

24:09

began featuring her and his

24:11

band. She. Grew up with

24:13

the family. When she was a bit

24:15

older, she sang with the band for the first time on

24:17

the air. After. Scott started hosting

24:19

the Lucky Strike Hit Parade, a

24:21

popular Tv so she became the

24:23

featured singer. She was twenty four.

24:26

And. At some point along the way

24:28

they got romantically involved. And

24:30

then. I've seen some letters

24:33

were my mother was rising to

24:35

him saying it's really it's so

24:37

I'm not really comfortable with her

24:39

and who knows what was going

24:41

on, because again, that's they eventually.

24:44

Got involved with each other

24:46

and he's of was my

24:48

mom and married her. Scott.

24:51

And Marjorie now Dorothy Collins were married

24:53

when she was twenty five. I

24:56

don't want to dramatize this or speculate on

24:58

how and when they got together, because no

25:00

matter what, it's a dark turn. She.

25:03

Had been like an adopted daughter to them,

25:05

away from her own parents. It.

25:07

Was the culmination. I think of

25:09

the most dangerous strain and Scott

25:11

thinking about musicians and people. When.

25:13

He must have seen in Marjorie Chandler

25:15

in the beginning was Dorothy Collins. A

25:18

chance to make his own musician. His.

25:21

Own person. As. If he

25:23

were building a machine. Every

25:28

week they appeared on Tv together. Collins

25:31

became a kind of American darling,

25:33

achieving a level of celebrity even

25:36

Scott had never had a star

25:38

the money came pouring. They.

25:40

Moved into a mansion on Long Island.

25:44

It had thirty two rooms and

25:46

four stories. That's

25:48

Dead Studebaker Raymond Scott and

25:51

Dorothy Collins' daughter. She's

25:53

a teacher and a poet. Which. You

25:55

can hear by the way she describes

25:57

a child at home and the house

25:59

was. the end of a long gravel driveway.

26:01

It had a forest

26:05

behind it. It was very grand.

26:07

There was a library with

26:10

a secret door. You pull

26:12

it out. There's a bathroom behind it. We

26:15

would go on these explorations in

26:17

the forest. There

26:19

was wisteria hanging over an

26:21

archway that was always

26:23

filled with bees. Inside

26:26

the house, Scott had begun to amass all

26:28

the electronic parts he wanted. He was

26:31

at once secretive and proud to show it off.

26:34

Let me take you downstairs and show you

26:36

these technical facilities. And I take it we're

26:39

supposed to have maybe

26:41

a half million separate items or so. An

26:43

electronic music studio wants to grow and grow

26:45

and grow and grow. The

26:47

room was full of gear, switches,

26:49

meters, welders, a furnace. But

26:52

now I'd like to take you upstairs to show you what we've

26:54

been building with all this equipment. Upstairs

26:58

was a 30-foot wall of

27:00

obscure electronic musical machinery. Alongside

27:03

his other musical work, Scott had begun

27:05

writing and recording music for commercials. I

27:10

have for several months now been unable to get this

27:12

jingle for Sprite out of my head. Over

27:15

the course of the 1950s, Scott wrote

27:17

jingles for a lot of big companies.

27:19

Schlitz Beer, RCA Victor, Vicks, Ford, Chrysler.

27:22

And a lot of the time, it

27:24

was Dorothy Collins singing them. He

27:26

had a plaque over his piano that read,

27:29

ideally, the word should make sense. These

27:41

companies were selling the future, and they needed

27:43

a sound to match it. In

27:45

the 1950s, Americans were

27:47

drunk on the post-war promise of consumer

27:49

technology. It was the age of

27:52

automatic, of being able to buy all sorts of

27:54

machines that would make your life easier. This

28:00

is London's new Tomorrow People.

28:06

Scott and Colin seemed at the time to have

28:08

a happy life together as the Tomorrow People, throwing

28:11

parties at their mansion, making music in the

28:13

machine rooms, and listening to it in the

28:15

listening room. They were in many

28:17

ways the sound of that post-war dream world. They

28:20

made music meant to push the button that

28:22

sent consumers marching off to make a purchase.

28:25

During those years, Scott was creating the kinds of

28:27

machines his music helped to sell, whirling

28:30

spinning devices that seemed as if they came

28:32

from the future. Just keep

28:34

in mind how different what you're hearing is from popular music

28:36

in the 50s. I mean, this

28:38

was the top song of 1959. I

28:41

got a gun, and I'm waiting for you to come

28:43

back. There wasn't as many as there was

28:46

a while ago. We fired once smaller, and

28:48

they'd forget the running. We're down the Mississippi

28:50

to the Gulf of Mexico. Music

28:54

like Scott's just didn't exist in the mainstream,

28:57

but he was sneaking it in there through commercials. He

29:01

saw his machines as a way to push

29:03

the envelope, and thought that because the sounds

29:05

they made were new, they'd catch the ear

29:07

and away jingles made with old instruments couldn't.

29:10

Scott seems to have created one of the first,

29:12

if not the first, musical sequencer, a device

29:15

that is the foundation for much of modern pop.

29:18

In a weird historical twist, one of the

29:20

ways he had financed all this experimentation was

29:23

by selling his early hits to Warner Bros.,

29:25

where they became a lot of the music

29:27

soundtracking the Looney Tunes. Literally

29:29

this man put the tunes in Looney Tunes. But

29:35

then he started to get sick. His

29:37

brother and his father had died of heart disease,

29:39

and Scott had his first heart attack in 1958.

29:43

I don't think it's a coincidence that within a

29:46

year, he began to work on

29:48

the first version of the Electronium, his

29:51

songwriting machine. and

30:00

perform at the same time. This

30:03

was the stuff of science fiction, a

30:05

dream a few people had had, but nobody

30:08

went for it quite like Scott, a

30:10

machine not just for playing music, but

30:12

for composing it. Scott

30:14

began to work harder and harder on the

30:17

machine, and at the same time, his

30:19

marriage to Dorothy Collins unraveled. She

30:22

discovered that she loved acting and the

30:25

theater, and my dad

30:27

didn't travel with her or us. He

30:29

was always working on his own stuff,

30:31

but I think there

30:33

was a certain lightness, I

30:35

think, that she probably found

30:37

being respected now, you

30:40

know, for something new that was hers. Acting

30:42

was hers. He had nothing to do with that.

30:45

Collins left, and then they were divorced. She

30:49

testified in court that he was such

30:51

a perfectionist, so intensely critical

30:53

that he gave her asthma, and

30:55

she couldn't sing when he was around. So

30:58

my mother used to say, it was

31:00

like Frankenstein's monster, and the monster kind

31:03

of woke up and decided, you know,

31:07

that she could be her own person. But

31:09

Scott was bereft, and he

31:11

took a bunch of sleeping pills,

31:14

thinking he was going to kill himself, but he just

31:16

went to sleep for a long time. He

31:20

moved out of the house into an industrial

31:22

space in a big office park on Long

31:24

Island. His TV show

31:26

was off the air. He

31:29

didn't have a hit band anymore, and

31:31

he was alone, but he

31:33

had one thing left, the

31:36

electronium. I

31:51

have very clear memories of

31:54

being out there, and the electronium was

31:56

in the very next room, iterating

31:59

away. which is what it did. You had

32:01

to kind of set it up and

32:03

then it would go through these iterations. And

32:06

we would be listening to it and he would

32:08

hear something he really liked and he'd jump up

32:10

and go in there and record it on the

32:12

cassette. In

32:14

the 1960s, Raymond Scott was living

32:16

in a long, low, white cement

32:18

warehouse surrounded by machines.

32:22

He had to seriously downgrade his life.

32:25

Jeff Winter. He works with

32:27

Chuzit, that radio DJ who went out

32:29

to visit Scott. And together with Scott's

32:31

family, they're preserving, managing, and sharing his

32:34

archives. He went from a

32:37

massive mansion of his own design

32:39

to living on Long Island

32:41

in a warehouse that wasn't even zoned

32:43

for residential, that didn't have

32:45

a kitchen. He was not supposed to

32:47

be living there. He'd gotten

32:49

married for the third time to

32:52

a woman named Mitzi Curtis. And

32:54

this time it stuck. But money was

32:56

tight. Popular music was moving

32:58

on. He was still composing

33:00

the occasional jingle, but now

33:02

really it was all machines. And

33:05

not just in his warehouse. The

33:07

concern over automation was reaching a fever

33:09

pitch in the United States. In

33:12

1960, John F. Kennedy even ran

33:14

for president against the machine threat.

33:17

Because the problem that West Virginia is facing

33:19

is the problem that all America is going to

33:21

face. That is the problem of

33:23

what happens to man when machines take their

33:26

place. Meanwhile,

33:28

Raymond Scott seems to have been trying to

33:30

replace as much of himself as possible with

33:32

the machine. Everything he

33:34

had ever done up until that point, in

33:37

one way or another, would become part

33:39

of the electronic. Even if he didn't, he

33:41

hadn't even declared to himself that that was

33:43

his goal yet. It's like everything's under that

33:46

one roof. His

33:48

bassline generator, his drum pattern generator,

33:50

the melody sequencer, all

33:52

of it tied together with thick

33:55

wires hidden behind the concrete walls

33:57

of the factory. And when Raymond...

34:00

came to the door. The

34:03

first thing I encountered was, well,

34:06

I want you to write, sign this disclosure

34:09

agreement. Tom

34:11

Ray. He used to work at Moog, probably

34:13

the most famous synthesizer company of all time.

34:15

He taught electronic music history at the Berklee

34:17

College of Music, where he was a professor.

34:20

But at the time he met Scott in the summer of 1970, he was

34:22

a graduate student, working

34:25

on his dissertation for a PhD in music.

34:28

I mean, I'm not an

34:30

industrial spy. I'm a graduate student. Ray

34:33

had heard that Scott was touched with genius and

34:35

he wanted to see what he'd been inventing. What

34:38

did I see? I saw everything. Oh,

34:41

my gosh, you know, what is this thing over

34:43

here? And I said, doesn't seem

34:45

to have a keyboard or any kind of

34:47

an interface. He said, well, it

34:50

does. It had one little

34:52

micro switch. And so

34:54

he goes over and he flips some of these

34:56

many, many knobs and switches

34:59

and things on the panel of

35:01

the thing and said, I'm going to have

35:03

it suggest a theme. And it

35:06

gives out with a little melody. And

35:08

then he says, I think I

35:10

will ask it to make the intervals,

35:12

the music musical intervals wider.

35:14

And he flips a couple of switches

35:16

and they're wider, you know,

35:18

and he put together, as I

35:22

said, they're a rather lush composition

35:29

with not only accompaniment, but counterpoint

35:31

and, you know, the whole thing.

35:37

Scott was inventing madly during those years.

35:40

The electronic combined a lot of different

35:42

gizmos he'd created. And it was a

35:44

constantly changing set of modules. You

35:46

control the music the machine made by

35:48

means of switches. He called the composer

35:51

guidance control. One of the

35:53

major X factors of the electronic is that

35:55

it seems to have had some way of

35:57

generating randomness within the preset patterns. They would

35:59

change on the their own over time, but

36:01

it's not clear to anyone how. This

36:03

was a crazy idea, but you can get

36:06

a clue to why Scott was after it

36:08

from an ad he made around then with

36:10

Jim Henson, the Muppets guy, for IBM. They

36:13

were pitching a new word processor, but the

36:15

ad is all about modern life. It's

36:18

a kind of crazy montage of

36:20

vacant looking people, machines, and explosions.

36:23

There always seems to be enough time to do

36:26

the paperwork. But today,

36:28

there isn't. Today,

36:30

there isn't enough time. Today, there

36:32

aren't enough people. Machines should do

36:35

the right. That's what they're best

36:37

at. People should do the

36:39

thinking. That's what they're best at. But

36:42

what about a machine that did the work and

36:44

the thinking? When Scott was

36:46

born, machines were being created mostly to

36:48

help people do rote physical labor. In

36:51

the first half of the 20th century, they began

36:53

to do those things automatically, at the push

36:55

of a button. And by

36:57

the age of the electronic, machines began

36:59

automatically to do things that looked a

37:02

lot like intellectual labor. This

37:05

robot manipulator can be easily taught because

37:07

of its electronic brain. Can

37:10

this type of control be applied

37:12

to other types of machines? Certainly.

37:16

In that light, Scott was reaching for the brass

37:18

ring. A machine capable

37:20

of making art, of

37:22

helping people make art, that expressed a

37:25

human soul and stirred human emotions. But

37:28

he needed money to do it. So he

37:30

started doing a little press. Small articles here

37:32

and there. It's like inventing

37:34

the typewriter, he told a journalist. Only

37:37

the typewriter furnishes the plot and

37:39

reads the result. I've always

37:41

told people that I consider Raymond

37:44

Scott one of the

37:46

pioneers of artificial intelligence in music. But

37:48

if you wanted to buy an Electronium from Raymond Scott,

37:50

it was going to cost you an arm and a

37:53

leg. And it was a crazy idea.

37:55

So It was by a stroke of luck

37:57

that the head of Motown Records, Barry Gordy.

38:00

Heard. About it. But. Not a one

38:02

man or than made our to man on

38:04

the base and but didn't know innovation a

38:06

team in any on for rural for the

38:09

food. Very gaudy sounded

38:11

Motown in Nineteen Fifty Nine in

38:13

Detroit. Before. Sounding the company

38:15

he had worked at a car factory during

38:17

the years when there was lots of Hubbard

38:20

Over plants that it achieved near full automation.

38:22

It was on the assembly line that Gordy

38:24

started to think about doing music differently. In.

38:27

His autobiography he wrote. The

38:29

Plant. The car started out as just a

38:31

frame poll long and conveyor belts until they

38:33

emerged at the end of the line. I.

38:36

Wanted the same concept for my company.

38:38

Only. With artists and songs and

38:40

records. And put it

38:43

on. Any you about it records are gonna be as.

38:46

Motown was a black own business

38:48

selling music by black artists to

38:50

everyone in America. Like everything in

38:52

the music business, he was precarious

38:54

economically because hit record steel in

38:56

matters of tastes and taste is

38:58

subject to buy a season wins.

39:01

Gordy with his assembly line past,

39:03

wasn't having that. He wanted to

39:05

systematize as much as possible made

39:07

ab test songs are different artists

39:09

until something stuck like are indeed.

39:11

They had a house band the some

39:14

for others providing ironclad rhythm section arrangements

39:16

across Motown. Sauce is as they were,

39:18

the engine departments. The only thing missing.

39:21

Was. The automation. And

39:25

that's why it makes sense to

39:27

me that one day in the

39:29

early Nineteen seventies Berry Gordy hold

39:31

up to Raymond Scots Warehouse with

39:33

a string of limits to see

39:36

the automatic song machine for himself.

39:38

And. By the way, good very good news. Raymond

39:40

Scott was like anybody of his generation. Revis

39:42

got was a famous first. So.

39:45

Thought he also knew he was getting that in

39:47

the deal. Some a new photos of

39:49

musical mine. Who. has already written

39:51

hits scott said gordian his crew the

39:54

warehouse and then he fired up the

39:56

electron him to succeed in his reign

40:00

He must have shown Gordy how you flipped the switches

40:02

to set a pattern. Then

40:04

watched as the machine iterated, changing

40:06

notes, repeating phrases, rifling

40:09

through ideas semi-randomly. And

40:12

during the last couple of minutes, the pattern

40:14

generator was on only

40:16

flat day, only one, four,

40:18

five, and that kind of thing. Scott

40:22

was selling an idea at that point, the

40:25

potential of a songwriting machine that could hit

40:27

on an idea that a person alone never

40:29

would. If it came up with a

40:31

hook that sparked in the way a hit does, you'd

40:33

know it when you heard it, and you could bottle it

40:35

up and sell it to millions of people. This

40:39

idea, I think, came straight from

40:41

Scott's quintet days, finding that

40:44

sound that you liked the first time you hear

40:46

it. It's a tricky balancing

40:48

act, because it has to be new enough

40:50

that it catches your attention, but

40:52

a hit also has to sound familiar enough that you kind of

40:54

know what you're going to get as soon as you hear it.

40:57

It's like an elevator pitch to the listener,

40:59

and Gordy was uncompromising about it. Here's

41:02

Smokey Robinson, in a 2019 documentary,

41:04

remembering that process. He

41:06

used to say that all the time, we gotta get him in the

41:08

first ten seconds. He's got these

41:10

fabulous intros, something that would get

41:13

your attention immediately. So in

41:15

that light, the Electronium makes perfect sense to me.

41:18

What if you could take a machine that had

41:20

baked into it all of the patterns and intuitive

41:22

musical sense of a proven hitmaker like Scott? But

41:25

then this crazy X-factor of

41:28

proto-artificially intelligent randomness. That

41:30

dream was Scott's life's work. He

41:33

needed it to work. Everything

41:35

was riding on it. So

41:42

Gordy was so impressed that he wrote a check on

41:44

the spot for $10,000 to get started. And

41:47

that was a lot of money back then. It

41:52

was a huge windfall. Scott was

41:54

overjoyed. Gordy wanted the

41:56

instrument remade to suit Motown's needs, so

41:58

Scott began working on. Immediately.

42:01

The. Machine would be a combination of everything he'd

42:03

worked on up to that point. including.

42:07

The. Player piano from his childhood.

42:09

Years' A call from a couple years earlier

42:12

of between Scott and Bob Moke, the synthesizer

42:14

legend had worked for him. And.

42:16

This knock me out when I first heard it

42:18

in the archives, but he was still thinking about

42:20

the player piano. You can hear the ideas is

42:22

bursting out of him. I. Have suffered

42:25

at at second. After

42:27

the Saudis have a secret stuff

42:29

about. A

42:32

after manage when I when I say

42:34

okay but they are not a problem

42:36

is edited or maybe that it's unclear

42:38

to me say the programming thing about

42:40

how his programming thanks and all the

42:43

automated tools A program effects. And

42:45

Saudi out programming is escorted. Either

42:47

way, it's done. A

42:50

player piano, For. The space. And it's.

42:54

Scott. Of course, Quickly blew through

42:56

the Motown down payment and ran out

42:58

of times, but Gordy didn't seem to

43:00

mind. Scott moved out to Motown's offices

43:03

in Los Angeles to work on the

43:05

Electron Am in a room about Berry

43:07

Gordy his garage. He became the Director

43:09

of Electronic Music Research and Development. Eventually,

43:12

he started to work on the machine

43:14

in the Motown Studios. People

43:16

were in ah and him and thinking

43:18

of a couple. Different engineers who up

43:20

there had to adjust to mad and

43:22

be like shaking their heads. kind of

43:24

like like bill what is going on

43:26

kind of thing. Scots daughter that Studebaker

43:28

again. According to a former

43:30

engineer at Motown's Michael Jackson, would come

43:33

by Scott Studio a small room on

43:35

the second floor and watch the Electron

43:37

Am work. He. Made music

43:39

unlike anything they'd heard. The

43:42

idea wasn't that the machine would write

43:44

a complete song structure verse, chorus, bridge,

43:46

but that it would it or it

43:48

on combinations of rhythm, court and melody

43:50

in search of that spark his way

43:52

of automating the part of songwriting Scott

43:54

excelled at. The. thing that caught your

43:56

ear and made you like something the first time

43:59

you heard it It was

44:01

meant as a collaboration between man and machine,

44:03

one that took the hard work out of the

44:05

most crucial part of the songwriting process. The

44:09

inspiration. But

44:13

over time, the extreme cost weighed the

44:15

project down. Also the

44:17

fact that Scott was never satisfied, refused

44:19

to be finished. The

44:21

Electronium worked. It just was

44:23

always opened up, being redesigned, refined,

44:25

changed. At one point, that

44:28

same engineer tried to get Motown's famous session

44:30

musicians to play along with the machine as

44:32

part of a drive to use the instrument

44:34

on a recording. But they revolted.

44:37

They didn't like it. They didn't like the idea of it.

44:40

They didn't like the concept. They didn't like what it theoretically

44:43

represented. And these guys were

44:46

great musicians. They didn't want to be replaced

44:48

by a machine. It's

44:52

not known whether the Electronium ever suggested an

44:55

idea that made it into a Motown song,

44:57

but I think it's unlikely. Gordy

44:59

let Scott take the Electronium home with him

45:02

eventually, to tinker with it around the house.

45:05

He'd stay up all night and work on

45:07

it all day in his pajamas, building new

45:09

bits and pieces, taking it apart and building

45:11

it again. Then his health got

45:13

worse. The music industry moved on,

45:15

started to forget about him. He

45:17

had several strokes, and the Electronium sat

45:19

and the guests shed out back. Gathering

45:22

dust, waiting to be found.

45:25

Well, it's Dr. Frankenstein's monster, isn't

45:28

it? Brian Kehoe again, synthesizer

45:30

wizard, former keyboardist for the who,

45:32

Fiona Apple producer, and the

45:35

second person this episode to bring up Frankenstein's

45:37

monster. More happily in this case,

45:39

about a machine rather than a person. He's

45:42

working now to bring the Electronium back to

45:44

life. We spoke last winter. And

45:47

so Electronium might be literally

45:49

just a piece of inspiration. If

45:52

I play piano or if I play guitar and write

45:54

songs, my fingers are even

45:56

limiting because I tend to play a certain

45:58

chord shape or I'm jazzed. easier and he's

46:00

more country. But if

46:03

the electronic was not confined by those things,

46:05

it might come up with ideas that are

46:07

beautiful hybrids, maybe a little jazzy but a

46:10

little polka and who knows what it would

46:12

come up with. But that's

46:14

an idea to say that the human

46:16

creativity is limited. It's a

46:18

beautiful thing when it works, but as we know, you

46:21

can't just write great music all day, otherwise everybody

46:23

would. I guess part of the problem is like

46:25

in a creative line of work, your

46:27

business, especially when you're Motown, which is

46:29

an empire at that point, is

46:32

totally dependent on this fundamentally unknowable, unreliable

46:34

thing, which is human creativity. Like you

46:36

never really know when the muse is

46:38

going to strike. And so especially with

46:40

the kind of assembly line Motown idea,

46:45

if you could just make that predictable and

46:47

automate it, the aha

46:49

moment, then that

46:52

would take a lot of the uncertainty out of the business.

46:55

I think you pointed out something that most people

46:57

don't want to ever mention,

46:59

which is that creativity is unreliable.

47:02

You might be Paul McCartney and able to write some

47:04

of the world's greatest songs. But if I brought him

47:06

in the room right now and gave him an hour

47:08

said, write me a great song, it

47:10

doesn't work that way. It

47:14

doesn't work that way. But you

47:16

can understand why someone who devoted his

47:19

whole life to making perfect music wish

47:21

that it did. Dan

47:49

Scott died in 1994 in obscurity

47:51

and relative poverty in a nursing

47:53

home near that faded house in

47:55

Van Nuys. She's

47:57

a winner, a slew of fellow enthusiasts,

47:59

the Scott family started to comb through

48:02

his archives to piece the whole crazy

48:04

story together. They shipped boxes

48:06

and boxes of tapes and records and papers

48:08

to the Mar Sound Archives at the University

48:11

of Missouri, Kansas City. Then,

48:13

they released his music and compilations.

48:16

Scott had always kept his machines mostly secret,

48:18

in case anyone wanted to steal them. But

48:21

when they finally released Scott's electronic music in

48:23

the early 2000s, he suddenly had a new

48:25

set of posthumous hits. You

48:27

probably don't even realize you've heard a

48:30

Raymond Scott song before, but he's been

48:32

sampled all over the place. Gorillas, Jay

48:34

Dilla, Lizzo. They've all sampled Scott. His

48:37

music is in The Simpsons, Ren and

48:39

Simpy, HBO shows. The

48:41

song you're hearing now is called Portofino,

48:43

and it was unreleased in his lifetime.

48:46

But there are all these recordings of it, each

48:48

trying it a different way. All

48:51

electronics, with vocals, with saxophone.

48:53

When the archivists found it, Chuzit thought the

48:56

melody was so classic, it must have been

48:58

a cover. And I went

49:00

into various databases looking for Portofino. There's

49:02

like 80 or 100 things called

49:05

Portofino. And I would go

49:07

through iTunes and listen to every goddamn one of them,

49:10

and not one of them was Raymond's melody. But to

49:12

this date, I mean, that thing's been out for 21 years,

49:14

and no one has come to us and said, hmm, that's

49:18

a cover version, or someone else wrote that, or is

49:20

it a traditional melody? A

49:22

true original. Meanwhile, Mark

49:24

Mothersbaugh, the lead singer of Devo, bought

49:26

the Electronium and dragged it from the

49:29

shed to his studios. Brian

49:31

Keyhue is trying now to assemble a

49:33

team of engineers to bring it back

49:35

online, in digital or physical form. Even

49:38

with all the schematics, they're still mystified. You

49:40

know, somebody said it's still a black box,

49:43

and that's true. We

49:45

still don't know what it did. And I feel

49:47

like we're looking through a keyhole at a room,

49:50

and we can barely see it until we get through the door

49:52

a bit more. There

49:54

are Scott cover bands and Scott festivals. Somehow

49:57

his music still resonates. Whatever sparks

49:59

he caught is still catching. What

50:02

I think is strange is most of the musicians who

50:04

knew Scott earlier in his life seem to have hated

50:06

him, but the engineers who knew him

50:08

at the end of his life loved him. A

50:11

lot of his early jazz hits were

50:13

aggressive, frantic firecrackers of song. But

50:16

the electronic stuff is often sweet,

50:18

guileless, innocent. Some of

50:20

that stuff was written in partnership with the Electronium,

50:23

his melody, its patterns. And

50:25

it sounds like a songwriter at peace with himself. At

50:29

one point he resisted human

50:31

control of it, but then he took one of

50:33

the voice cards and adapted it to a keyboard

50:35

input. As he found before when

50:37

he would put a Hammond organ or mostly

50:39

an Andelein on top of the Electronium, it

50:41

really needed somebody doing a

50:43

nice melody in order to sell the package. There

50:52

is, I think, a lesson in Scott's life.

50:55

One that's kind of a moral detail

50:57

for our own AI-addled chat GPT world.

51:00

He walked from automatic pianos to

51:02

the first computers. He

51:04

sought perfection. He sought

51:06

industrial scale creativity. But

51:09

the tradeoffs he made were the relationships

51:11

around him, the failure to see

51:13

the humanity of the people he was trying to

51:15

control. People would sometimes talk

51:17

about Scott as if he were a machine. But

51:20

I think there's something in his music that

51:22

testifies to a soul. That

51:24

ghost at the keys of the player piano. Those

51:27

recorded phone calls to his family, that

51:29

early string of hits, all the

51:32

musical machines. What they

51:34

have in common is the goal of each song,

51:37

to connect people through sound. Scott

51:41

prized perfection in that end above

51:43

everything else. And it

51:45

ruined him. Some

51:47

day soon someone might be able to bring

51:49

the Electronium back to life and hear again

51:51

the inside of Scott's mind. But

51:54

still, I think he must have known. The

51:57

Electronium could never write a Raymond Scott

51:59

song. For that, you

52:02

needed Raymond Scott. Is

52:04

that all, Harry? I shall we go for it. The

52:18

Last Archive is written and hosted by me, Ben

52:21

Nadeff-Haffrey. It's produced

52:23

by me and Lucy Sullivan, and edited

52:25

by Sophie Crane. Jake Gorski

52:27

is our engineer. Fact checking

52:30

on this episode by Arthur Gompertz and

52:32

Lucy Sullivan. Sound design by

52:34

Jake Gorski and Lucy Sullivan. Our

52:37

executive producers are Sophie Crane and Jill

52:39

Lepore. Thanks also to

52:41

Julia Barton, Pushkin's executive editor. Original

52:45

music by Matthias Bossi and John

52:47

Evans of Stellwagen Symphonet. Additional

52:49

music by Corntooth. Our

52:52

foolproof player is Becca A. Lewis. Many

52:55

of our sound effects are from Harry Jeanette Jr. and

52:57

the Starr Jeanette Foundation. Special

53:00

thanks on this episode to Alan W.

53:02

Ntendman, Jack Hertz, Carl

53:04

Miller and the Pyurian Recording Society, and

53:06

Byron Werner. For

53:08

bibliography, further reading, and a transcript

53:10

and teaching guide to this episode,

53:12

head to thelastarchive.com. The

53:15

Last Archive is a production of

53:17

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53:40

wherever you get your podcasts. I'm

53:43

Ben Nattafafari.