Basta
2003
Microphone Music
About This Album
Jazz music, always known for its spirit of improvisation, was hardly the medium for composers or producers during its first 50 years. Even the greatest early arrangers -- Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman -- allowed plenty of room for solos, and would've been deserted by most of their musicians if they hadn't. All of which explains why Raymond Scott was never considered a jazz artist. His pieces, impressionistic yet rigidly composed, did use all the same components of a jazz band and exhibited close superficial similarities to Duke Ellington's early jungle band and the Benny Goodman Orchestra. The difference lay with his insistence on perfection, in his recording techniques and the members of his band. The Raymond Scott Quintette was a clean, technical, utterly precise swing machine -- the logical progression, in his mind, of the noisy jazz racket originally delivered on record by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. Microphone Music, another Scott-related reissue by the Basta label, is a two-disc bonanza of unreleased titles, rarities, and rehearsals from the late '30s that will taste of manna from heaven for listeners who spent a decade in the wilderness after Columbia's greatest-hits volume, 1992's The Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights & Turkish Twilights.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2,3,5,6,7,9,12 and 16)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 3,8,12,18,19 and 20)

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