Raymond Scott - Obscurity and Rediscovery

Obscurity and Rediscovery

His legacy underwent a revival in the early 1990s with the release of Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights (Columbia, 1992, produced by Irwin Chusid with Hal Willner as executive producer), the first major-label CD compilation of his groundbreaking 1937–39 six-man quintet. A year earlier, Irwin Chusid and Will Friedwald produced a CD of live Scott quintet broadcasts titled The Man Who Made Cartoons Swing for the Stash label. Around this time, the director of The Ren & Stimpy Show, John Kricfalusi, began hot-wiring his cartoon episodes with original Scott quintette recordings. In the late-1990s, The Beau Hunks (a Dutch ensemble originally formed to perform music created by Leroy Shield for the Laurel and Hardy movies) released two albums of Scott's sextet (a.k.a. "Quintette") repertoire, Celebration on the Planet Mars and Manhattan Minuet (both released on Basta Audio-Visuals). Various members of the Beau Hunks (reconfigured as a "Saxtet", then a "Soctette") also performed and recorded various Scott works, sometimes in collaboration with the Metropole Orchestra.

"Powerhouse" has been used as a promotional bumper for the Cartoon Network, as well has having been interpreted by the rock band Rush in their 1978 song "La Villa Strangiato" on their Hemispheres album. The same tune was reinterpreted as the song "Bus to Beelzebub" by the New York band Soul Coughing, who have used Scott samples in other compositions, such as Scott's "The Penguin" in their song "Disseminated." They Might Be Giants have also incorporated "Powerhouse" into their music, briefly including it in their song "Rhythm Section Want Ad" from their self-titled 1986 debut album. In 1993, Warner Bros. music director Richard Stone scored an entire installment of Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs around "Powerhouse" (the episode, entitled "Toy Shop Terror," notably had no dialogue except in the closing seconds, thus allowing Stone's Stalling-meets-Spike Jones arrangement to dominate the soundtrack). In late 2006, "Powerhouse" began airing regularly as the soundtrack for a Visa check card TV commercial. It has also often been used as a bumper on "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!," NPR's weekly quiz show. It also appeared in The Simpsons, played over the ludicrous and allegedly true method by which bowling alleys assemble new pins.

Clarinetist Don Byron has recorded and performed Scott's music, as have the Kronos Quartet, Steroid Maximus (J. G. Thirlwell), Jon Rauhouse, The Tiptons (with Amy Denio), Jeremy Cohen's Quartet San Francisco, Skip Heller, Phillip Johnston, and others. Robert Wendel arranged six Scott works and one medley for full symphony orchestra in the mid-1990s. The New York–based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette recorded an album of radically modernistic interpretations of Scott compositions (Evolver Records, 2002) and stages sporadic performances. Classical pianist Jenny Lin covered Scott's "The Sleepwalker" on her album InsomniMania (Koch Classics, 2008).

The posthumously released 2-CD set, Manhattan Research Inc. (Basta, 2000, co-produced by Gert-Jan Blom and Jeff Winner) showcases Scott's pioneering electronic works from the 1950s and 1960s on two CDs (the package includes a 144-page hardcover book). Microphone Music (Basta, 2002, produced by Irwin Chusid with Blom and Winner as project advisors), explores the original Scott Quintette's work. The 2008 CD release Ectoplasm (Basta) chronicles a second (1948–49) incarnation of the six-man "quintet" format, with Scott's future wife Dorothy Collins singing on several tracks.

Devo founding member Mark Mothersbaugh, through his company Mutato Muzika, purchased Scott's only (non-functioning) Electronium in 1996, with the intention of restoring it to working order, but with no progress in that direction as of 2010.