Jimmy Scott

jazz singer; rhythm and blues singer

Personal Information

Born James Victor Scott on July 17, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio; married five times, most recently to Jeanie, 2003
Religion: Baptist.

Career

Recording artist, 1940s-; toured with Estelle Young, 1940s; joined the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, 1949; joined Paul Gayten's band, 1951; recorded with Charlie Parker, Ray Charles, and others until late 1960s; worked as an elevator operator, waiter, shipping clerk, and other jobs, 1970s and 1980s; signed by Sire Records, 1991.

Life's Work

A jazz and rhythm-and-blues (R&B) singer with a distinctive high-pitched voice, Jimmy Scott is admired by singing stars as diverse as Madonna and Lou Reed. His heyday was the 1950s and 1960s, when he was known among jazz fans as a vocalist with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, and his most acclaimed album is 1962's Falling in Love Is Wonderful, which he made with Ray Charles. His pretty, girlish voice was well suited to the sad, lonely songs that were his specialty in the 1960s and he was a major influence on singers like Charles, Marvin Gaye, and Nancy Wilson. Though his career faltered in the 1970s and 1980s, Scott made a highly successful comeback in the 1990s. Since then he has recorded several albums and performs to sell-out audiences. Madonna has been reported as saying that "Jimmy Scott is the only singer who makes me cry."

James Victor Scott was born on July 17, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, one of ten children. When Scott was 13 his mother was hit by a car and killed. His father, who worked as an asphalt layer on road gangs, left soon after and the children were raised in foster homes. Scott's late childhood was also blighted by a rare inherited hormone deficiency known as Kallmann's Syndrome, which meant he never went through puberty and forever carried the nickname "Little" Jimmy. His celebrated high-pitched voice is the result, but Scott had a difficult time growing up in his teens, growing to only four feet eleven inches until his mid-thirties, when he inexplicably grew a little more. Throughout his early adult life Scott was accused of being a woman in disguise and subjected to humiliating abuse and police searches. He began singing in church and at first hoped to record gospel songs--he names Paul Robeson, Ivey James, and Bessie Smith as his early influences--but his voice and the way he uses it make him ideally suited for the cool, slow-paced jazz for which he has become famous. His private life, including four turbulent marriages--one of his wives stabbed him with a kitchen knife--and bouts of heavy drinking, have also proved more in line with the jazz lifestyle than the gospel scene. He married his fifth wife, Jeanie, on December 31, 2003.

Scott's professional career began with Estelle Young, touring the Midwest and performing in black theaters and bars. He seemed about to break into the big time in 1949 when he joined Lionel Hampton's band. Scott made some of his most influential recordings in the following few years, including "Everybody's Somebody's Fool," and "I Wish I Knew," but the records were credited as "Lionel Hampton and vocalists," so the singer's name did not appear on them. Even so, his voice was so distinctive that it was well known among Hampton's followers. Scott left Hampton's band and joined Paul Gayten's group, but despite having recorded "Embraceable You" with Charlie Parker, Scott felt he was struggling to break out from the limited coverage and sales offered by the audiences in the small clubs.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s he recorded with the Savoy label under various smaller labels, and thus came under the control of Savoy's owner, Herman Lubinsky. Lubinsky was well known for having his artists sign very restrictive contracts and when Scott left to record with Ray Charles under Charles's Tangerine record label, Lubinsky blocked him. Falling in Love Is Wonderful is probably Scott's most important record, yet it was on sale for only a few weeks. For this reason it is one of the most collectable jazz records on the market. After several failed deals in the late 1960s Scott started drinking heavily and gave up on his singing career. In the 1970s he worked as a helper in a nursing home and as a clerk. He started singing again in 1984, but it was the death of his friend songwriter Doc Pomus in 1991 that really began his comeback. Singing at Pomus's funeral, Scott was spotted by Sire Records president Seymour Stein and received a five-album contract the next day.

Since then Scott has toured with Lou Reed and sung backing vocals on his Magic and Loss album; he has since appeared with Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, as well as having one of his songs featured on The Cosby Show and singing "Under the Sycamore Tree" on the cult favorite TV show Twin Peaks. In the 1990s a cure was found for Kallmann's Syndrome, but Scott refused it on the basis that it would rob him of his gift. Listing entertainment business luminaries such as Quincy Jones, Robert DeNiro, and Tony Bennett among his friends, Jimmy Scott achieved stardom over 40 years after his career began. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Joseph Hooper attributes the revival in Scott's fortunes at least partly to the singer's strange, feminine voice and a growing acceptance of sexual ambiguity in entertainment: "Scott's aging androgyny undoubtedly helped him secure his cult status," he argues, but it is only with age that his voice and approach to music have matured. He describes Scott as "perhaps the most unjustly ignored American singer of the twentieth century." In 2003 Scott toured in Asia and Europe and in 2004 he continues to perform, enjoying a career that ended so abruptly in the late 1960s that many fans thought he was dead.

Works

Selected discography

• Little Jimmy Scott/The Paul Gayten Band: Regal Records: Live in New Orleans!, Specialty, 1951; re-released, 1991.
• If You Only Knew, Savoy, 1956; re-released, 2001.
• The Fabulous Songs of Jimmy Scott, Savoy, 1960; re-released, 2003.
• Falling in Love is Wonderful, Tangerine, 1963; re-released by Rhino, 2002.
• The Source, Atlantic, 1969; re-released, 2001.
• All the Way, Warner Brothers, 1992.
• Lost and Found, (recorded in 1969 and 1972) Atlantic, 1993.
• Heaven, Sire, 1996.
• Holding Back the Years, Artists Only!, 1998.
• Everybody's Somebody's Fool, Universal Music, 1999.
• The Savoy Years and More, Atlantic, 1999.
• Mood Indigo, Milestone, 2000.
• Over the Rainbow, Milestone, 2001.
• But Beautiful, Milestone, 2002.
• Moon Glow, Milestone, 2003.

Further Reading

Books

• Ritz, David, Faith in Time: The Jazz Life of Jimmy Scott, Da Capo, 2002.

Periodicals

• New York Times Magazine, August 27, 2000.
• Jet, March 17, 2003, p.34.

On-line

• "Interview with Little Jimmy Scott," All About Jazz, www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/jscott.htm (October 15, 2004).
• "Jimmy Scott Biography," Fantasy Jazz, www.fantasyjazz.com/html/scott_j_bio.html (October 15, 2004).

Other

• Little Jimmy Scott: Why Was I Born? (documentary biography), Bravo Profiles, Bravo , 1998.
• Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew (documentary biography), PBS, 2004.

— Chris Routledge

• Born: July 17, 1925, Cleveland, OH
• Active: '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Vocal Music
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "The Savoy Years and More," "The Soul of Little Jimmy Scott," "Falling in Love Is Wonderful"
• Representative Songs: "When Did You Leave Heaven?," "Day by Day," "Laughing on the Outside"

Biography

Singer Jimmy Scott (aka Little Jimmy Scott) had an unusual career conditioned by his physical limitations and record company machinations that sometimes prevented him from being heard, but he mounted a major comeback late in life. He was born one of ten children to Arthur and Justine Scott in Cleveland, OH, on July 17, 1925, and he first sang in church. His mother was killed in a car accident when he was 13, leaving him to be raised by foster parents. He suffered from a rare hereditary condition called Kallmann's Syndrome that prevented him from experiencing puberty, such that he stopped growing when he was less than five feet tall and his voice never changed from a boy soprano's. He began singing professionally during the 1940s, touring in tent shows. In 1948, he joined Lionel Hampton's band, and he made his recording debut in with Hampton for Decca Records in January 1950. One of the songs from those sessions, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool," entered the R&B charts in October 1950 and became a Top Ten hit. Scott left Hampton in 1951 and went solo. An appearance with Paul Gayten's band at Rip's Playhouse in New Orleans that year was recorded by Regal Records, but went unissued for 40 years until Specialty Records released it in 1991 as Regal Records Live in New Orleans From 1951 to 1955, Scott recorded singles for Royal Roost, Coral, and Roost Records. Then, in 1955, he moved to Savoy Records, which issued his first LP, Very Truly Yours, that year. In 1957, he switched to King Records for a series of singles, but in 1959 he returned to Savoy, which issued his second LP, The Fabulous Little Jimmy Scott, in 1960. In 1962, he signed to Ray Charles' Tangerine label and recorded his third album, Falling in Love Is Wonderful, but it had to be withdrawn shortly after its release when Savoy claimed he was still under contract there. This debacle led Scott to leave the music business (he eventually took a job as a shipping clerk at the Sheraton Hotel in Cleveland). In 1969, he recorded his fourth album, The Source, for Atlantic Records, and in 1975, he returned to Savoy for his fifth LP, Can't We Begin Again. But neither effort achieved commercial success, and he continued to work outside music.

Scott began performing in clubs again in 1985. In 1990, backed by the Jazz Expressions, he returned to the recording studio for J's Way Records. One of his long-time supporters was songwriter Doc Pomus, and when Pomus died on March 14, 1991, the by-now 65-year-old Scott sang at his funeral. The performance was heard by Seymour Stein, the head of Warner Bros. Records-distributed label Sire Records, who signed Scott to a contract. This led to a major comeback. In June 1991, Scott (billed as James V. Scott) appeared in an episode of director David Lynch's off-beat television series Twin Peaks. (Scott later appeared in the films Scotch and Milk [1998] and Chelsea Walls [2001].) He sang on Lou Reed's Sire album Magic and Loss, released in January 1992. His own new album All the Way (the first on which he was billed simply as Jimmy Scott) was released by Sire/Blue Horizon/Warner Bros. later in 1992 and reached number four on Billboard's jazz album chart, also earning a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. The same year, he sang on the soundtracks for the films Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and Glengarry Glen Ross. In 1993, Rhino Records delved into the Atlantic Records archives to assemble Lost and Found, containing some unreleased material from sessions in 1972; the album reached number 14 in the jazz charts. Scott's next album of new material, Dream, was released by Sire/Blue Horizon/Warner Bros. in 1994 and reached number eight in the jazz charts. Heaven, an album of gospel and spiritual songs, appeared in 1996 and reached number 19 in the jazz charts. That concluded Scott's Warner Bros..contract, but he recorded Holding Back the Years, for the Artists Only! label in 1998, and it reached number 14 in the jazz charts. In 2000, he moved to Milestone Records, and Mood Indigo reached number 17 in the jazz charts. Despite passing his 75th birthday, he continued to record frequently, releasing Over the Rainbow in 2001, But Beautiful in 2002, and Moon Glow in 2003. All of Me: Live in Tokyo appeared in 2004. Savoy Jazz issued All or Nothing at All in 2005. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

Heaven Buy this CD	Savoy Years and More Buy this CD	All or Nothing at All: The Dramatic Jimmy Scott Buy this CD	Regal Records Live in New Orleans Buy this CD	Holding Back the Years Buy this CD
Holding Back the Years Buy this CD	Mood Indigo Buy this CD	Timeless Buy this CD	Very Truly Yours Buy this CD	But Beautiful [Expanded] Buy this CD

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