Sessions at West 54th Street

Article and David Byrne interview from the Sessions at West 54th Street Website

Song List
1. What I Wouldn't Give
2. The Crying Game
3. Jealous Guy
4. Holding Back The Years
5. How Can I Go On
6. Almost Blue
7. Slave To Love
8. Nothing Compares 2 U
9. Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest
10. Don't Cry Baby

First-time listeners often assume Scott's voice is that of a woman. But it is not just his range that mesmerizes: He sings slowly, drawing out notes across measures, playing havoc with time. Sometimes leaving supporting musicians behind, Scott continues a cappella, evocatively delivering painful ballads in his own time. A difficult childhood, failed marriages, and questions about his sexuality and drug use-as well as ill treatment by the music industry-have left a mark of sadness on the singer's life. In Pulse he observed: "A lot of people, like me, carry sadness with them for the rest of their life. I don't think I'll ever lose the expression of that. But, in a strange way, that sadness has finally brought about some happiness in my life."

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 then Scott has sung for celebrity filled audiences on both coasts, with Lou Reed on Magic and Loss, and with Bruce Springsteen on the film soundtrack Philadelphia. He even appeared as a ghost on the final episode of director David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks, singing an original tune. "Under The Sycamore Tree." The man for whom Jet magazine "had printed an enormous obituary in 1965," according to LA weekly, was back.

One of ten children, Jimmy Scott was born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck-a sign, remarked one of his father's friends, that he would become a singer. Scott's father, Arthur "Scottie" Scott, was a skilled asphalt layer; his mother, Justine Scott played piano at Hagar's Universal Spiritual Church and would gather the children to sing gospel songs, noted Jimmy McDonough in the Village Voice. In the same article, Scott reported that his mother was a stern music teacher: "She'd make you feel guilty for voicing wrong notes. She was a very spiritual woman, a cornerstone of strength. My father just didn't give a damn." Her death in 1938 after being hit by a car caused the family to be split up into foster homes and created a lifelong desire for family unity that Scott has never reconciled.

Although he has told many tales about his youth, it appears that Scott first embraced big band music while serving as an usher at the Metropolitan Theater. He then went on the road with two tap dancers, working as their valet and pestering them to let him sing. In Meadville, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1940s, Scott got his chance. He was a hit in front of a band that included Lester Young, Ben Webster, and Jo Jones. " Even the first night, the people screamed and hollered," Scott recounted in the Village Voice.

By the early 1960s Scott's career was floundering. He stayed on in California after a performance and wound up recording an album on Ray Charles's own label, Tangerine. The singer was accompanied by Charles -whom he had known from his days with Lionel Hampton-on piano and a live string section. Scott declared in the Village Voice, "I finally got a chance to sing with the instrumentation I wanted" and called his collaboration with Charles "a meeting of the souls." Returning to Cleveland to await the records release, Scott learned that an injunction was being filed by the owner of Savoy claiming that Scott was still under contract. Tangerine subsequently halted distribution.

Despite the warm reception by old and new fans, it took several years of tough club dates before Scott began to get the attention he deserved. The time Jimmy McDonough spent with him during this period became the basis for McDonough's seminal 1988 article in the Village Voice, the proceeds from which he used to produce a demo for Scott. In 1989 the singer received a Rhythm and Blues Foundation Grant, and three years later, his first release on Sire, All The Way, earned good reviews and a nomination for a Grammy Award. Produced by Tommy LiPuma, it featured Scott in front of an orchestra performing such classics as "Embraceable You", "At Last," and "Every Time We Say Goodbye." People were impressed by his unique style as well as his influence on other musicians. As Doc Pomus noted in LA Weekly in 1990, Nancy Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Johnnie Ray "all began with 'Watered down versions' of [Scott's] sound."

The year 1994 marked the release of Dream , an album produced by Mitchell Froom and featuring Junior Mance on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Peyton Crossley on drums, and Mitt Jackson on vibes. Saxophone players Red Holloway and Patience Higgins also contributed, along with guitarist Rick Zuniger and Froom himself on keyboards. Scott seemed pleased with the sessions, recalling in his Sire Records biography: "Everyone who was there had really wanted to make it, and that made all the difference. A lot of the tracks we got in the first take. We wanted something friendly and intimate on the album and that came right out of those sessions and the feelings we were sharing at the moment."

For Scott singing has always been about feeling, whether to help bear the pain of his mother's death or the many pains that followed. As he confided in Bazaar: "I've learned that music is such a healer. As long as I could sing my songs, I wasn't as angry about what had happened, about being shoved back for this or shoved back for the other. I'm a singer, and I never lost sight of that."

Interview with Little Jimmy Scott by David Byrne

David Byrne: You've done records of what we know as standards. A year or so ago you did a record of what would be known as spiritual or gospel material. You have a new record that mixes some standards with songs by younger writers, or songs associated with rock bands. What makes you decide that a song is right for you?

Jimmy Scott: Well music, when written properly, is music. The important thing is that the story complements the music.

David Byrne: So you're not saying that you could interpret any song and put it into a Jimmy Scott style?

Jimmy Scott: Oh yes I could.

David Byrne: That would be interesting to hear.

Jimmy Scott: Because any singer that was in depth with his singing or his delivery of singing could do that. But it's a thing that I took as a tool, an instrument, to create my songs. I believe that singers today come in, or ... artists come in the business, usually with a gimmick idea that they want to do. But the background in music, they limit by not being versatile. And I think the singer should have an incentive to every song. How can I say a rock writer is bad if he's got good material and it attracts people? It's giving people a message.

David Byrne: In your performances, because they're so emotional for an audience, do you feel completely drained at the end of an evening?

Jimmy Scott: At times. That doesn't come often. But at times. That you're doing and the music being right and you just get into it, but as I went on, I grew to learn how to handle that. Because there were emotional moments earlier years because I used to come off the stage crying. Tears. Lionel Hampton started my name, "Crying Jimmy Scott." Yeah.

David Byrne: Why did you want to learn not to cry? Was it just physically and emotionally exhausting?

Jimmy Scott: I felt like, people don't want to see me standing up here crying because I feel emotional about the lyrics I'm singing, and I felt that was wrong, I shouldn't do that. So I worked myself out of it and got more control over the emotions.

David Byrne: I want to ask you about the sadness in your songs. You've, I think, said yourself that it's a healing thing.

Jimmy Scott: It is.

David Byrne: Singing these songs is probably healing for you and for the audience.

Jimmy Scott: You know I always tell people that one of god's greatest gifts to me is the music. It has that emotional attachment with life. And it's just powerful and strong. Most that are able to deliver the story in proper, because I used to listen to, when I was a kid, whenever they'd say they were playing a Paul Robeson record on the radio, got to get home, got to hear this guy. 'Cause I thought he was the greatest storyteller of a song at that time. And yet with this big bold voice, he was so dramatic with it.