Raymond Scott (1908-1994) led a dual musical life, as the bandleader of several successful jazz bands, and as an electronic music pioneer and researcher. He graduated from Julliard in 1931 with a degree in piano composition and theory, and was promptly hired by CBS as an on-staff pianist. He promptly formed a band using CBS musicians, and from there evolved into becoming the leader of a successful 1930s swing band, the Raymond Scott Quintette (which, despite its name, consisted of six musicians).
However, he also had an interest in building instruments for, and recording, electronic music. He began tinkering with electronic and electromechanical music devices in the late 1930s. After World War II, he established his own studio and audio services company, Manhattan Research Inc. This did mostly music for soundtracks and advertising, using a variety of electronic devices that Scott built himself. He continued to lead several bands, writing a number of popular jazz tunes such as "Powerhouse" (part of which was frequently used in Warner Bros. cartoons) and "The Toy Trumpet". By Scott's own telling, by this time, he was continuing to do the more commercial music activities mainly so that he would have money to put into his electronics. When his older brother Mark Warnow, who led the band for the popular radio show Your Hit Parade passed away in 1949, Scott took over the role, which he performed for the next 10 years.
Meanwhile, he continued to build electronic devices and file patents, some of which were licensed for additional income. (One of his patents had to do with optical scanning of documents, which was licensed by, among others, Xerox and IBM.) He built an instrument called the Clavivox, which started out as a keyboard-controlled version of a theremin, but soon grew to have much greater timbral possibilities than the typical theremin. Around 1960, he started work on a massive instrument that he named the Electronium. This was basically a combination of a synthesizer and an algorithmic composition machine, with panels of numbered buttons allowing the performer to set up a basic melody sequence, and then select a number of alterations and variants as the performance proceeded. The plans caught the eye of Motown Records owner Berry Gordy, who hired Scott in 1971 to build an Electronium for the label.
Unfortunately, Scott, who was rather notorious for always wanting to continue improving his devices, never finished the Electronium to his own satisfaction. He and Motown agreed to part ways in 1977, with Scott taking the device back to his home. No recordings are known to have been made at Motown with the device. By this time, Scott had become a semi-recluse; he no longer recorded with bands, and kept much of what he was doing with his electronics under wraps. Scott had survived a series of heart attacks beginning in 1959, but in 1987 he suffered a debilitating stroke, which left him unable to speak or work. By this time, he had not released any recordings in years, and was largely forgotten by the public. The royalty streams for his music had shrunk to a trickle, and his patents had all expired.
In 1991, two fans tracked Scott down in Los Angeles, and were given permission by his wife Mitzi to began combing through his archives, which contained thousands of hours of unreleased material. Scott passed away in 1994, just as some of the recently discovered material was finally appearing on the market, reviving interest in Scott's works.
During his lifetime, very little of Scott's electronic music was released, and so even fans who remembered his days as a bandleader and pianist knew little of this other side of Scott's work. Starting in 2000, both non-electronic and electronic Scott material has been released, some of it recorded as long ago as 1957; the latter albums include Manhattan Research Inc. and Three Willow Park. Scott's 1964 release Soothing Sounds for Baby is now recognized as a very early attempt (more than ten years before Eno) at ambient music.
Mark Mothersbaugh purchased the neglected and non-working Electronium from Scott's estate in 1995. He made an attempt to restore it, but was unable to complete the project; Scott left very little documentation. Since 2017, producer and synth collector Brian Kehew has been attempting to restore it.