Middle Career
After serving as CBS radio music director for a number of variety programs from 1942 to 1944, Scott left the network to pursue other projects. He composed and arranged music (with lyrics by Bernie Hanighen) for the 1946 Broadway musical Lute Song, starring Mary Martin and Yul Brynner.
In the late 1940s, contemporaneous with guitarist-engineer Les Paul's studio work with Mary Ford, Scott began recording pop songs using the layered multi-tracked vocals of his second wife, singer Dorothy Collins (1926–1994). A number of these were commercially released, but the technique failed to earn Scott the chart success of Les and Mary.
In 1948, Scott formed a new six-man "quintet," which served for several months as house band for the CBS radio program, Herb Shriner Time. The ensemble also made studio recordings, some of which were released on Scott's own short-lived Master Records label. (This was not the Irving Mills-owned label of the same name; Scott allegedly named his label in tribute to the by-then-defunct Mills enterprise.)
When his brother Mark Warnow died in 1949, Scott succeeded him as orchestra leader on the popular CBS Radio show Your Hit Parade sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes. The following year, the show moved to NBC Television, and Scott continued to lead the orchestra until 1957. (Collins was a featured singer on Your Hit Parade.) Although the high-profile position paid well, Scott considered it strictly a "rent gig," and used his lavish salary to finance his electronic music research and development, largely out of the public limelight.
In 1950 Scott composed his first—and only known—"serious" (classical) work, entitled Suite for Violin and Piano. The five-movement suite was performed at Carnegie Hall on February 7, 1950, by violinist Arnold Eidus and pianist Carlo Bussotti, who subsequently recorded the work. (Unreleased at the time, the archival recording is scheduled for Spring 2013 CD release by Basta Audio-Visuals.)
In 1958, while serving as an A&R director for Everest Records, Scott produced singer Gloria Lynne's album Miss Gloria Lynne. The sidemen included many of the same session players (e.g., Milt Hinton, Sam "The Man" Taylor, George Duvivier, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Eddie Costa, Kenny Burrell, Wild Bill Davis) who participated in Scott's 1959 Secret 7 recording project.
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