Powerhouse (instrumental)

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Powerhouse (song)
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"Powerhouse"
Brunswick 78 rpm issue of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse"
Single by The Raymond Scott Quintette
B-side"The Toy Trumpet"
Released1937
RecordedFebruary 20, 1937
Genre
Length2:56
LabelMaster Records
Brunswick
Columbia
Songwriter(s)Raymond Scott

"Powerhouse" (1937) is an instrumental musical composition by

animated cartoons released by Warner Bros.

History

In scripted comments read on the First Anniversary Special of CBS Radio's Saturday Night Swing Club, on which the Raymond Scott Quintette performed, host Paul Douglas announced that "Powerhouse" had been premiered on that program in January or early February 1937.[1]

Scott's Quintette (actually a sextet) first recorded "Powerhouse" in New York on February 20, 1937, along with three other titles. This recording was first commercially issued on the

ARC, which included the Brunswick catalog). The same take was issued on all releases.[2] (An unreleased 1939 recording by the original Scott Quintette was issued in 2002 on the two-CD Scott compilation Microphone Music
.)

The personnel on the February 20, 1937, version are:

"Powerhouse" and "The Toy Trumpet" remained in Scott's repertoire for decades, and both were

Carl Stalling along with a dozen other Scott titles, and both have been recorded by numerous other artists. Stalling, who spiced his scores with "Powerhouse" dozens of times,[3]
never created a complete version of the work, with all his adaptations existing as excerpts.

The United States

Warner/Chappell Music
.

Structure

Structurally, "Powerhouse" consists of two distinct – and seemingly unrelated – musical themes, played at different tempos. Both have been used in numerous cartoons. The first theme, sometimes referred to as "Powerhouse A", is a frantic passage typically employed in chase and high-speed vehicle scenes to imply whirlwind velocity. The slower theme, "Powerhouse B", is the "assembly line" music, which sometimes accompanies scenes of repetitive, machine-like activity. "Powerhouse" in its entirety places "B" in the center while "A" opens and closes the work (ternary form).

Use in cartoon works

The first use of "Powerhouse" in a cartoon occurred in the 1943

Rumors. It was subsequently featured in over 40 other Warner Bros. cartoons.[5] The most well-known "assembly-line" usage of "Powerhouse B" occurs in Bob Clampett's Baby Bottleneck
(1946), in which newborn babies (of various species) are processed on a conveyor belt in time to the melody.

The "Powerhouse A" section is featured prominently during Bugs Bunny's altercation with a gremlin in Clampett's 1943 Merrie Melodies cartoon Falling Hare. Stalling's lengthiest adaptation of the "Powerhouse A" section is interpolated during the beginning and end of the rocket travel sequence in the 1953 Merrie Melodies cartoon Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (directed by Chuck Jones). It starts at roughly 2:20, clocking in at one minute and twenty-five seconds.

Other Warner cartoons which contain excerpts from "Powerhouse" include Birdy and the Beast (1944), Cat-Tails for Two (1953), Early to Bet (1951), Falling Hare (1943), His Bitter Half (1950), House-Hunting Mice (1948), It's Hummer Time (1950), Jumpin' Jupiter (1955), Rocket Squad (1956), Sheep in the Deep (1962), Compressed Hare (1961), and dozens more.[6]

In the 1960s, producer Hal Seeger and composer/arranger Winston Sharples adapted "Powerhouse" and other Scott compositions in dozens of episodes of their Batfink cartoon series.[7]

The original Raymond Scott Quintette recordings, including "Powerhouse", were licensed in the early 1990s for

The Ren and Stimpy Show.[8] Various passages of the tune have been arranged for use in The Simpsons, Duckman, The Bernie Mac Show, and The Drew Carey Show (in a brief scene involving an animated character). An entire 1993 episode of Animaniacs, "Toy Shop Terror", was set to Warner Bros. music director Richard Stone's arrangement of the composition. "Powerhouse" also served as bumper theme music for Cartoon Network from 1998 to 2003,[9] and can be heard as a systematic rock theme in the 2003 feature film Looney Tunes: Back in Action
.

"Powerhouse" has been used In

Charles Montgomery Burns, having lost his memory, is led to a dangerous construction site by Homer Simpson, who seeks revenge for Burns' years of cruel behavior. Burns walks along moving girders, narrowly avoids flying rivets, and other well-worn cartoon construction site gags. Simpsons creator Matt Groening once ranked "Powerhouse" as #14 on a list of his "100 Favorite Things".[10]

A remix is used in Madness Combat, a Newgrounds series.

In the

season 12, an arrangement plays over a scene of SpongeBob SquarePants using a Rube Goldberg machine to get to work, the arrangement uses an ukulele, an instrument traditionally used in SpongeBob music.[11]

"Powerhouse," with added lyrics and a new arrangement, was used as a recurring song in the Looney Tunes animated series Bugs Bunny Builders entitled "Hard Hat Time" by composer Matthew Janszen.[12][13]

Recent performances, recordings, and usages

In recent years, Powerhouse has been recorded by jazz clarinetist Don Byron on his album Bug Music,[14] jazz pianist Ted Kooshian on his 2009 CD Ted Kooshian's Standard Orbit Quartet: Underdog, and other Stories...,[15] pedal steel guitarist Jon Rauhouse, The Metropole Orchestra, The Beau Hunks Sextette, The Coctails, and jazz guitarist Skip Heller. The title, as arranged by Michelle DiBucci, has been in the repertoire of Kronos Quartet since 1994.

The

J. G. Thirlwell). Lee Presson and the Nails
included it on their album Jump-swing from Hell: Live At the Hi-ball Lounge.

In 2006-2007, the "assembly line" theme was used in a highly

Visa check card. The commercial, entitled "Lunch",[17]
was staged in a manner intended to be reminiscent of the tune's cartoon uses.

In August 2009, Sinking Ship Productions staged a musical portrait of Raymond Scott entitled Powerhouse at the New York International Fringe Festival.[18] The composition "Powerhouse" was used as a recurring theme. Sinking Ship presented a revised and fully-staged version of the production at the New Ohio Theatre in Manhattan in 2014.[19]

On August 8, 2013, the Raymond Scott Orchestrette performed an arrangement of "Powerhouse" to accompany Dance Heginbotham's choreographic work Manhattan Research at New York's Lincoln Center Out Of Doors summer concert series.[20][21]

"Powerhouse" was also used in some PBS commercials in 2000 urging viewers to shop.

In 2014, the Dubuque, Iowa, Colts Drum and Bugle Corps included "Powerhouse" as part of their show, "Dark Side of the Rainbow".[22] In 2016, Bethesda Softworks used the Scott Quintette's original 1937 recording in a showcase presentation for their Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter games.[23]

In 2017, Chapo Trap House utilized the piece for their Call of Cthulhu Tabletop Game series.[citation needed]

The "assembly line" section was used on Neil Cicierega's 2020 album Mouth Dreams in the song "Whitehouse", in which it was matched up with the vocals to The White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl".

In April 2021 the tune was used in the CBS TV show Young Sheldon, in the opening scene of the episode "Mitch's Son and the Unconditional Approval of a Government Agency" (season 4, ep. 14).[24]

References

  1. ^ Amazon.com Saturday Night Swing
  2. ^ 78discography.com MASTER Records numerical listing discography
  3. ^ Biography for Carl W. Stalling at IMDB
  4. ^ "Private Snafu: Spies". Internet Archive. 1943.
  5. ^ Index of Raymond Scott titles in Warner Bros. cartoons at RaymondScott.net
  6. ^ Warner Bros. cartoon montage featuring "Powerhouse" adaptations
  7. ^ RaymondScott.net Raymond Scott's Music in Other Cartoons
  8. ^ RaymondScott.net Raymond Scott music in Ren & Stimpy
  9. ISBN 9781569764121
    . Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  10. ^ "Matt Groening's 100 Favorite Things". ilxor.com. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  11. ^ "SpongeBob SquarePants (TV Series): Broken Alarm/Karen's Baby (2019) Soundtracks". IMDb.com. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  12. ^ "Hard Hat Time" song adapted from Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" in Bugs Bunny Builders
  13. ^ "Bugs Bunny Builders".
  14. ^ Amazon.com Bug Music
  15. ^ "Amazon.com: Ted Kooshian's Standard Orbit, Standard Orbit Quartet: Underdog, and Other Stories...: Music". amazon.com. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  16. ^ ViolinJazz.com Quartet San Francisco
  17. YouTube
  18. ^ "At the Fringe: 'Powerhouse' - The New York Times". artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  19. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  20. ^ Seibert, Brian, "Would Daffy Approve? Perhapth", New York Times review of Manhattan Research, August 9, 2013
  21. ^ Irwin Chusid (2013-08-11). "Raymond Scott Archives Blog: Would Daffy Approve?". raymondscott.blogspot.com. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  22. ^ 2014 Song Listing for Colts Drum and Bugle Corps
  23. ^ Fallout 4/Fallout Shelter/Skyrim Special Edition: 2016 #BE3 Showcase Presentation, June 12, 2016 (music begins at 0:36)
  24. ^ Episode soundtrack listed at Tunefind.com

External links

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