The cover of the Raymond Scott compilation, “Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights.”
And now, for a lesson in musical turbulence, we turn to Raymond Scott’s 1939 instrumental, “Bumpy Weather Over Newark” — a theme that’s rather perfect for Scott’s manic sensibilities.
Scott, a Brooklyn native, was born and 1908 and died in 1994, and the music he made in the ’30s and ’40s was way ahead of its time; he’s been called “the Frank Zappa of his day.” While he didn’t write specifically for cartoons, many of his compositions were used in classic Warner Bros. cartoons (underscoring the antics of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and others), and later found homes in episodes of “The Simpsons” and “Ren and Stimpy.”
Longtime WFMU-FM disc jockey Irwin Chusid played a big role in creating a revival of interest in his music in the 1990s, and getting some of his greatest ’30s compositions re-released on the CD, Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights.
New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday in 2014. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we marked the occasion by posting 350 songs — one a day, from September 2014 to September 2015 — that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. To see the entire list, click here.
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