Bruce Haack – Biography
August 16th, 2003
Bruce Haack
Bruce Haack is one of the pioneers of electronic music during the 50’s and 60’s, who worked in numerous music genres from musique concrete to space-age-pop and whose works preceded the later synth pop and space rock music.
Bruce Clinton Haack was born May 4, 1931 in Nordegg or Saunders Creek, Alberta, Canada. He started learning piano during his childhood and by age 12 he organized local country & western bands. Bruce applied to the University of Alberta in Edmonton to study music but he was rejected because he was not prepared enough so he studied and received his degree in psychology at Edmonton. During those days, he wrote and taped his first music music for theatre productions and radio, and he met the legendary actor Charles Laughton who suggested him to move New York City. After his graduation, Hack received a Canadian government scholarship to attend the Julliard School in New York City to study composition with Vincent Persichetti.
Bruce Hack decided to drop the music scholarship and in 1954 he moved to New York City “with a chicken sandwhich and 60 dollars”. The next years he was commissioned by Belgian TV for his first works on musique concrete: a 3 movement ballet scored for electronics, soprano and violin. This was followed by the taped Composition “Lullaby For A Cat”.
In 1957, Bruce Haack started writing pop songs, starting with “Miranda” for Mark Records. During the following years he released numerous pop songs using the monikers of Jackpine Savage and Jacques Trapp, including “Satellite”, “I like Christmas”, “Sea Shell” and “So I Said”, which were very popular at the time. In 1961 he wrote his first musical for the Broadway show “How to Make A Man”, which was followed by “The Kumquat in the Persimmon Tree” (1962). At this stage of his career, Bruce Haack started writing his first composition for orchestra entitled “Windsong”.
In 1964, Haack released his first of many works “Dance Sing and Listen” on the Dimension 5 label that he founded a year before with his wife, Esther Nelson. Both of them collaborated on 11 children records that combined electronic music, storytelling, and a pioneering psychedelic worldview. His album “The Way Out Record for Children” released in 1968, influenced by acid rock, featured robotic songs that were a precedent to the work by pop-definition”>synth pop artists such as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan in the 70’s.
Haack also produced in 1964 “Garden Of Delights”, mixing Gregorian chant with electronic music but this work hasn’t been released yet to date. During the early 60’s, extended his interest in music to the new technologies and he started re-designing cheap keyboards and utilizing spare parts to get new sounds as long as he couldn’t afford to get that kind of gear. This way he developed several electronic innovations, such as the Theremin-inspired Magic Wand and the Dermatron, a device that worked off the natural conductivity of the human body. In a way, Bruce Haack was a sort of visionarie who was sure that in the future the people will create and share their music electronically without record company involvement, sharing music and communicating with it directly from mind to mind and soul to soul.
He also wrote and produced numerous radio commercials and he even appeared at the celebrated Johnny Carson’s TV show playing Dermatron. In 1970, after having wrote and produced numerous radio commercials and appeared playing Dermatron at the celebrated Johnny Carson’s TV show, Bruce Haack started working in music for TV spots and released the album “Electric Lucifer”, a psychedelic electronic work was ahead of the later space rock music by bands like Hawkwind, Ashra and Gong. This led him to meet the electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott who shown his interested in his works. As a consequence of this encounter, Bruce Haack started working with Bruce Scott’s Electronium and he was also given a Clavivox keyboard. The style of “Electric Lucifer” was followed by the albums “Ebenezer Electric” (1976) and the sequel “Electric Lucifer Book II”, which was never released.
During the 80’s, Bruce Haack remained active releasing numerous works on his Dimension 5 label, including “Bite”, “The Silly Song Book”, “The Funny Song Book”, “The World’s Best Funny Songs” and “Eveybody Sing & Dance”.
Bruce Haack died in September 1988 at the age of 57. In 2005, the tribute album “Dimension Mix” was released featuring covers by Stereolab, Beck, Money Mark, Eels, and other artists, as a recognition of the influence of his music in the future generations.