Jean-Jacques Perrey

Jean Marcel Leroy, better known as Jean-Jacques Perrey, was a French electronic music performer, composer, producer, and promoter. He is considered a pioneer of pop electronica. Perrey partnered with composer-performer Gershon Kingsley to form the electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, who issued some of the first commercial recordings featuring the Moog synthesizer. Perrey was also one of the first to promote, perform, and record with the Ondioline, developed by Georges Jenny.

Biography

Early life

Jean Marcel Leroy was born in Amiens, in the north of France. He was given his first instrument, an accordion, at age 4 on Christmas Eve, 1933. He learned to play piano and studied music at a conservatory for two months, during which he and several classmates formed a jazz band, which performed at the school and at public venues. However, the school's director warned the students that they could either "continue playing jazz or continue your studies". Perrey was expelled from the conservatory for violating a prohibition against students performing in public; he later graduated from the Lycée d'Amiens. He studied medicine in Paris for four years, and planned to pursue scientific research. He was an avid reader of science fiction, in particular the works of Isaac Asimov, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury, and took occasional work as an accordionist.

Start of music career

In 1950, while enrolled in medical school, Perrey heard inventor Georges Jenny playing and promoting his homemade Ondioline on a French radio show. "With the audacity of youth phoned the radio station and requested Georges Jenny's telephone number, which he was duly given," wrote music historian Mark Brend. "Perrey then phoned Jenny himself, saying he liked the sound of the Ondioline but couldn't afford to buy one." Perrey offered to promote the instrument if Jenny would give him one for free. After a visit to the inventor's workshop, Perrey was loaned an Ondioline. For six months Perrey practiced playing the Ondioline with his right hand while simultaneously playing piano with his left. Jenny was so impressed with Perrey's proficiency, he offered him a job as a salesman and product demonstrator. After earning substantial commissions on sales made during a trip to Sweden, Perrey quit medical school and devoted his career to electronic music.
In 1951, singer/composer Charles Trenet heard about the Ondioline and requested a demonstration of the instrument by Perrey, who at the time was traveling to promote the new device. Trenet was so impressed that he hired Perrey for the recording session for the song "L'Âme des poètes". At a second session, Perrey played Ondioline on three more Trenet songs; the guitarist on two of those later tracks was Django Reinhardt. "L'Âme des poètes" became an international commercial success, and Perrey was asked to accompany Trenet on stage. "My collaboration with lasted a year," said Perrey, "during which I was able to meet other great artists and singers such as Yves Montand and Jacques Brel. I made my debut on radio and French television, not only as an accompanist of great singing stars, but also performing my own musical act." Perrey began to travel extensively, first in France and then abroad to attend international music fairs. Eventually he developed a cabaret act, "Around the World in 80 Ways", which was a showcase for the Ondioline's versatility. Perrey explained:

Thanks to the Ondioline, I could imitate instruments from around the world, such as bagpipes from Scotland, American banjo, Gypsy violin, soprano voice, Indian sitar, and so on. I made a world tour in music and finished it with a gag of whistling a tune. At the end, the whistling was still going on, but I was drinking a glass of water. We all laughed.

Perrey's first commercially released recording under his own name was Prelude au Sommeil, issued in 1958, which was described by the artist as an "auditory recipe" to induce sleep in insomniacs. "I had the good fortune of meeting scientists who were interested in the possibilities of using electronic sound for psycho-medical purposes," Perrey later recalled. "Together we had the idea of creating sound complexes to induce calm in disturbed, agitated people. We created a team of researchers: acousticians, medical doctors, physicists, psychiatrists, a total of nine in all. I was the catalyzer, the musician. We spent many hours making experiments to determine which sounds would induce a state of serenity and calm."
In 1959 Perrey performed on a 10" LP entitled Cadmus, Le Robot de l'Espace, a children's record issued on the Philips label; Perrey played Ondioline and provided sound effects. That same year, composer Paul Durand hired Perrey to provide Ondioline accompaniment for the main theme of the French-Italian tragi-comedic film La Vache et le Prisonnier , which starred French actor-singer Fernandel.

Relocation to New York

At the Studio of Contemporary Music Research in France, Perrey met Pierre Schaeffer, who had pioneered the avant-garde sound art form known as musique concrète. Thereafter, Perrey began to experiment with tape manipulation. Around this time he performed at the Olympia Theater in Paris accompanying France's most acclaimed chanteuse, Edith Piaf, who became an enthusiastic proponent of Perrey's musical gifts. The association with Piaf, Perrey later wrote, proved pivotal in advancing his career.

Edith herself was very impressed by the immense possibilities of the Ondioline. From her, I learned many “tricks of the trade” having to do with show business and song arrangement. She gave me money to buy studio time, which allowed me to record a few pieces on magnetic tape which were a showcase for the Ondioline. She even decided herself which pieces I should record to obtain maximum effect. She was impeccable – very demanding. When she had decided that the tape was “almost perfect,” she told me, “Now you must mail this to a person I’m going to give you the name and address for in New York. I will write him as well, to let him know of your forthcoming correspondence. You’ll see; he will answer you.” It was impossible to debate with Edith; one always had to do as she decreed! Three weeks later, I received an envelope from America. There was no note enclosed – only a round-trip plane ticket with an open return date, plus one word written in big felt-tip pen on the envelope: “COME!” Thus began the fairy tale.

The man to whom Perrey had sent the tape was instrument contractor Carroll Bratman, the well-connected proprietor of Carroll Music. In March 1960, Perrey relocated to New York under the mentorship of Bratman, who sponsored Perrey's green card, paid Perrey's living expenses at the Bristol Hotel on West 48th Street, got him registered with the musicians' union, paid him a salary, and landed him appearances performing the Ondioline on television. Bratman built Perrey an experimental laboratory and recording studio, with state-of-the-art tape recorders, and accorded him free use of any instruments in the Carroll Music collection.
After his arrival in the United States, he recorded two EPs on the French label Pacific Records with the aim of demonstrating the capabilities of the Ondioline for the American public, the first Mr. Ondioline was released in 1960, it consists of four tracks showing Perrey on the cover "donning a dark hood with small slits for the eyes and mouth in an attempt to conjure up the record's mysterious titular figure." The second entitled Ondiolinorama was released in 1961 with a much lower number of units. Both EPs featured Perrey's instrumental arrangements of other songwriters' work.
Perrey made his U.S. television debut on Tonight Starring Jack Paar; he also appeared on The Garry Moore Show, I've Got a Secret, and Captain Kangaroo. Perrey composed jingles for radio and television, sometimes in partnership with Harry Breuer and Angelo Badalementi. In 1962 Perrey issued the LP Musique Electronique du Cosmos, in collaboration with Sam Fiedel and Harry Breuer, on the MusiCues label. The album was recorded in New York, but the location was listed as Paris on the jacket to avoid union obligations. The 15 short tracks were intended for television and radio background use. Less than 500 copies were reportedly pressed.

Perrey & Kingsley and the Moog Synthesizer

Perrey was introduced to German-American composer/musician Gershon Kingsley in 1965 at Carroll Music. As a duo, Perrey and Kingsley recorded two albums for the Vanguard label: The In Sound From Way Out!, for which Perrey played Ondioline and provided musique concrète "rhythmic patterns", and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations, on which the duo played mostly Moog synthesizer, with added special effects. Some tracks by Perrey and Kingsley were licensed for radio and television commercials. In 1968, "The Savers", from Kaleidoscopic Vibrations, won a Clio Award when it was used as the soundtrack for a No-Cal diet soft drink commercial.
After splitting from Kingsley, Perrey continued featuring the Moog on many of his subsequent solo records, most of which incorporated the name "Moog" in album titles like Moog Indigo. On the Moog Indigo track "Flight of the Bumblebee", Perrey began with a recording of actual bees:

For this composition, I took a Nagra tape recorder to an apiary in Switzerland to record the live sounds of bees buzzing about their hive. I took these bee tapes back to New York, where my studio had a variable-speed tape recorder. Using this machine, I transposed the bee buzzes to the subdivisions of the 12-tone equal-tempered scale and rerecorded them on another tape machine. Then, using manual splicing techniques, I edited the melody for one verse. Just this part took 52 hours of splicing work. People told me that I was crazy, but I told them to listen to the result! We added an accompaniment to the melody, recreating the "Flight of the Bumblebee" played by living bees.

The Happy Moog! was recorded with Harry Breuer, one of the first musicians he met when he moved to New York City. Perrey played Moog synthesizer and other keyboards, while Breuer played xylophone and other percussion.