The Jimmy Scott thread

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,871041,00.html

Rah! For it's truly an amazing album.

Falling in Love Is Wonderful is available on Amazon.co.uk. I guess Rhino couldn't (as yet) clear the U.S. rights except for a limited edition.

I've been a Jimmy Scott fan since 1991, when I was 13. I discovered the (Andy Paley-organized) Rage in Harlem soundtrack which had a title track sung by Jimmy in the style of his Savoy sides. It was right around this time that he was "rediscovered," signed to Reprise, and not long after appeared in the glorious final episode of Twin Peaks.

I saw him perform last year at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago and he did not disappoint. The audience was about two-thirds upper-middle-aged blacks and a third under-30 hipsters. At the beginning Smith called an older woman in the audience, and outed her as someone he had travelled the chitlin circuit with back in the (he coughed here for effect) '40s. Scott looks an enormously fragile man, and at the outset I had some doubt that he could carry a show effectively for an hour or more. But carry it he did, with a little break to show off his band, for almost two hours as I recall.

Scott is nothing if not an intelligent stylist, an intelligent man, and he acknowledges that his voice does not have the range and suppleness it once had. He compensates for this remarkably by an extraordinary sense of pacing.

Anyways, for those unfamiliar with Jimmy, I'd recommend The Source and now Falling in Love Is Wonderful, both from a period where he was in full voice but also in command, enough to indulge himself. Of his comeback albums, I admit a weakness for Over the Rainbow from a few years ago.

As for his voice sounding like a woman's, I like to think that he balances out Nina Simone, who I've occasionally mistaken for a man. Both beautiful singers, of course.

Sean, you beat me to the punch. i was going to say "It sounds like he and Nina Simone traded voices"

I have been listening to Holding Back The Years. Shouldn't be good, but is. Amateurist is spot-on in saying that it is the pacing that distinguishes Jimmy.

I can't get into the 'comeback' albums, unfortunately. That first Savoy lp is stunning and there are a few killer singles on King.

Eh, just write off the Taco Mesa meal on the expense account. :-)

I should add that as penance I will be hanging posters at the venue. Usually a volunteer helps me with that but I don't want to snatch too many admissions from the hungry mouths of Stereolab fans.

What is FAP?

FAP = fancy a pint. It's slang on this board because of the high concentration of London posters from the start, who all being able to readily reach one another via tube and train would start asking if people wanted to go to a pub for a drink = 'fancy a pint?' = FAP. Its usage is now international.

I'm new here.

was listening to the source last night

still think it's his finest moment

The Source is incredible, particularly Day by Day. How DOES he DO it???

yeah my fave on the source is 'exodus' partly because it's just so damned unlikely

And you can find him singing it on the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me soundtrack album.

i would say that "the source" is the best place to start, and "all the way" is the best of his comeback period. the really early stuff (some w/lionel hampton's band) is great too, but more conventional.

(sorry, replace "Incredible" with "Fabulous" in my original post...)

Falling In Love Is Wonderful.
Found a lone copy of this in one of my hometown shops today. Didn't leave it there, oh no:)

any one recommendation I should start with? heard him via twin peaks and thought the song in the finale was incredible.

would recommend the source as the place to start, as noted above.

He's gonna be performing in DC in 2 weeks. I wonder how he is live at this point?

My guess would be kinda fragile, and his vibrato is, how to describe this, wide? I'm still kicking myself for not seeing Bobby Blue Bland recently though, so I would say go; he's not getting any younger. Seeing artists like Ruth Brown and Champion Jack Dupree late in their life (when they certainly weren't 100%) was still, in retrospect, amazing.

He has a recent CD where he's covering "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word" and "Nothing Compares 2U." !!!

there's a version he does of Duke Ellington's "Solitude" that is pretty off the charts amazing. Kinda messes me up, actually! guy can hit some *notes*!

I know this is terrible, but every few month I check Wikipedia to see if he is still with us. See him live if you can!

does he still perform? I thought he was basically retired?

seeing him in early '00s was a highlight of my life for sure.

RIP

awwww man =(

Knew this day would come, but still. I LOVE this guy.

Oh I started this thread!

yeah, 88, so he was getting up there. amazing, unbelievable singer.

Kid Congo Powers put it so well on Twitter today:

"Thank you for such beauty."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRYJbaxwJ20

Saw him sing at the Newport Film Festival in 2000, right after a screening of “Bravo Profile’s Little Jimmy Scott: Why Was I Born?” He was less 10 feet away from me on a tiny raised platform in a small hotel conference room, with only a pianist accompanying him. The most emotionally naked performance I’ve ever seen. There were plenty of people in the audience who had never heard of this guy — they were there for the films, not the music — but several of them were in tears. RIP.

yeah i remember really listening to him for the first time and just thinking i wasn't really ready for the kind of emotion this guy was capable of putting across.

Ha, I guess I already told you all that up thread.

This.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Y45k2u7Mw

:(

RIP

can't seem to find that big jimmy scott profile in the village voice from the 80s anywhere online, though i think i read it somewhere a while back...

A reference to that article here, but I don't see the article:

http://www.jimmyscottofficialwebsite.org/sessions54.htm

Indeed, in the late 1980's, after spending some 20 years outside the music business, Scott reemerged as a powerful song stylist. His career was bolstered by both Jimmy McDonough's 1988 article on the singer in the Village Voice and Scott's rendition of the George and Ira Gershwin tune "Someone to Watch Over Me" at the 1991 funeral of rhythm and blues songwriter Doc Pomus, after which, according to Bazaar, he was signed to a five-album deal by the president of Sire Records, Seymour Stein. Since

AGGGHH RIP motherless child

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1GdJIzeQs

ok i was SURE he died years ago

don't really know what to say. very glad he found new audiences in his later years, and reconnected with old ones. saw him live in 2001 and while his voice as an instrument was somewhat diminished (although still instantly recognizable, not least for his idiosyncratic vibrato) his phrasing/pacing was still absolutely, stunningly singular.

here's a good representation of what he could do with a ballad (and not even a great one, in other hands):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ADbt5P-4M

jeez, nobody cares i guess :(

haven't heard that record -- from the 70s, I'm assuming from the cover? Almost sounds like it could be a Nina Simone track.

was lucky enough to have seen him about a handful of times since the early 00's. despite his diminishing health and voice in recent years, he still stunned to the last. gorgeously unique. a true loss.

I started listening to him a couple of years ago, during a dark point in my life; his voice was too beautiful for words. I should get back into him again. I care, for sure.

rest in peace, Jimmy.

x-post--from wiki

Another album, The Source (1969), was not released until 2001.

haven't heard that record -- from the 70s, I'm assuming from the cover? Almost sounds like it could be a Nina Simone track.

― tylerw, Monday, June 16, 2014 9:48 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

late 60s. his best record IMO

and it was released, then pulled from distribution b/c savoy records' threatened to sue atlantic (for no good reason as it turns out)

Sleazy Savoy record label head I believe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_fQYx50xg0

looks like an interesting movie

but did they end up processing his voice heavily in recording? :/

anyway, can someone explain this cover art:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Xb9L6ql2L._SS500_.jpg