Buckle up tight, pull the skin on your face back and hang on because we're going by rocket to the moon and our conductor is none other than that audio astronaut extraordinaire, Raymond Scott, and his crew the Quintet. Actually, we'll be going on the voyage twice; once on the 10 - inch kid's record from the Children's Record Guild ( a division of the American Recording Society ), out of Toronto, Ontario, and narrarated by Ralph Comargo. The project features five 'educational' songs with music by Scott (no author is credited for the records dialogue and lyrics) and sung by the Jean Lowell Chorus. The songs aside - the real star here is the multi-part composition "Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket Express to the Moon", which has a lot of arrangement packed into a little package (and one of the longer song titles anywhere). The full album art can be found here.
Scott had released this cut on one of his series of Audivox records (AL -5000) in 1950 and the kiddie version dates from the same year. That rocket has some pretty big wings on it - ! Riding that solar breeze, I suppose. This charming ep is similar to many other 'space education' records from the next decade, except for the intricate, high-energy Raymond Scott touch, always distinctive. We also have the original Audivox-label instrumental version on the launch pad for your perusal (From the Basta cd release Ectoplasm), which seems to be the same recording, different mix. I had been curious for some time to place the two versions side by side, and so here we have two space journeys, Raymond Scott-style.
Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket Express to the Moon
I posted a blog entry about this a few years ago:
http://raymondscott.blogspot.com/2008/02/aka-barret-eugene-hansen.html
Posted by: Jeff Winner | July 09, 2011 at 06:45 PM