If you’ve ever watched Saturday mornings cartoons as a kid, you must be familiar with the sounds and music of Raymond Scott (1908-1994) who composed tons of wild and zany music for Looney Tunes, Merry Melodies, and even things like The Simpsons. Not exactly danceable stuff, or the material that Miles Davis would play, but it’s fun, it’s wild, there’s improvisation and it swings!
So, The string Quartet San Francisco (Jeremy Cohon/vi, Joseph Christianson/vi, Chad Kaltinger/va Andres Vera/cel) got together with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band for a rollercoaster ride that reinterprets Scotts music for modern ears, and even brings back Scott for various spoken word segments (backed by the various musicians) to give a bit of perspective to the sounds you’re taking in.
And Oh! What sounds! There’s a fun and frantic read of the classic “Powerhouse” that has Goodwin blowing up a storm on his tenor, while Wayne Bergeron blows his horn on the cartoonishly classical “Toy Trumpet”. A per-swing “Cutey and the Dragon” mixes puffy reeds and pizzicato’d strings, and for a real hoot, the vocal group Take Six chimes in with the strings for a ch arming “In An 18th Century Drawing Room” and a lovely “Serenade”. The two juxtaposed bands swing hard on “The Quintette Goes To A Dance” and old school reeds from Goodwin, Sal Lozano/ss, Brian Scanlon/ts and Jay Mason/as-bs have a gas with Jeremy Cohen’s solo on “Yesterday’s Ice Cubes”.
The sense of intricate charts melded perfectly with a sparkle in the eye works wonders on this album. Tha-Tha-That’s All, Folks!