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Stu Brown Sextet
Twisted Toons
Lickety-Splat Music LS 001
Most
people will be familiar with the music of Raymond Scott courtesy of its
use in 1940s Warner Bros cartoons, featuring the likes of Daffy Duck, Porky
Pigg and Road Runner, but this is one of those accidents of history, the
result of WB buying the rights to Scott's music (originally made in the
late 1930s for his Quintette, a six-piece band) and using them to bring
their Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons to life.
Scott was a great believer in infusing swing music with energy and zip via vibrant arrangements, a tendency to avoid solos, and a reliance on playing (and composing) by ear (he used to say: 'You give a better performance if you skip the eyes').
He also occasionally adapted classical themes (this album's 'In an 18th-Century Drawing Room' comes from the opening of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C, K. 545), and sold records in their millions, neither practice calculated to endear him to jazz aficionados. Drummer Stu Brown formed this sextet (completed by tenor saxophonist Brian Molley, clarinettist Martin Kershaw, trumpeter Tom MacNiven, pianist Tom Gibbs and bassist Roy Percy) in 2008, especially to celebrate the centenary of Scott's birth, and it plays the great man's music with admirable panache, vim and wit (but – and this is crucially important – without a hint of archness).
As Stan Warnow, Scott's son, comments: '[Brown's sextet] captures the essential spirit and substance of the original, always making my Dad's deceptively complex music sound effortless and original.' Amen to that; this is a welcome revivification of the work of a neglected master.
