Jimmy Scott is the most overlooked ballad singer in jazz, a veteran whose comeback from hard times inspires as much as his voice. With two Jazz Fest shows scheduled, he comes to New Orleans for the first time since recording a live album here in 1951.
Jimmy Scott makes me want to slit my wrists. And I mean that in the nicest way. Rarely has a voice been able to capture such longing and loss so deliciously. But unlike, say, Billie Holiday or Chet Baker, Scott always conveys powerful resilience. Floating behind the ultra slow beat like Lester Young’s sax, with vibrato to rival Ethel Merman’s, Scott emotes with theatrics worthy of cabaret. He crawls inside a listener’s heart, then thrashes until the pain is gone.
Here are the facts: Scott was born in Cleveland in 1925. Because of a hereditary hormonal condition called Kallmann’s Syndrome, he never went through puberty. He stopped growing at 4 feet 11 inches, and his voice is set at a preternaturally high range—many who hear it for the first time think it’s a woman’s. When he was 14, his mother was killed in a traffic accident and his nine siblings were scattered to various foster homes. He started touring in the mid-1940s. By 1948 he was in Harlem and got his big break with the Lionel Hampton Band (their recording of “Everybody Is Somebody’s Fool” hit No. 6 on the R&B charts). In 1951, while touring with the Paul Gayten Band, he recorded a New Orleans show at Rip’s Playhouse (in the Ninth Ward, near the shipyards) that Specialty Records released 40 years later.
In his heyday, such as it was, the guy who used to be known as Little Jimmy Scott was known to carry a pistol—to ensure getting paid at gigs, but also to ward off advances from the considerable number of men who thought he was gay. Others thought he was a female in drag. Scott also exerted palpable (straight) sex appeal, and the gender ambiguity only added to his empathetic powers. He battled the bottle. His luck ran bad.
Example: A breakthrough album for Ray Charles’ Tangerine label was yanked in a contract dispute with Savoy Records. During the long lean years Scott worked as a hotel shipping clerk and later cared for his ailing, estranged father.
His career rebound started in the early 1990s after legendary record exec Seymour heard Scott sing at Doc Pomus’ funeral. Today, after several glowing albums, Scott’s hipness quotient is high among New York rockers like Debbie Harry and Lou Reed. At age 76 he is a fashion model for Italian designer Saverio Palatella. His new record, Over the Rainbow, is just out on Milestone Records.
We spoke by phone on March 8. When a woman answered I wasn’t sure if it was Jimmy or not. He came on the line in a voice like a jockey’s. Not one to wallow in introspection—at least not long distance with a stranger—Scott sounded cheerful to the same extreme as his ballads exude sadness. He punctuated his small talk with odd exclamations. Even after he warmed to the conversation, his hipster slang and unique phrasing never betrayed anything but sunshine.
Jimmy Scott: Hellooooo.
Is this Jimmy?
Yes it is!
This is Scott, calling from New Orleans.
Oh, wonderful!
How are you?
No sense kickin’. Kickin’ ain’t gonna do nothin’ but HURT your foot!
I understand you just got back from Milan, performing at some fashion shows.
OH! Yes! It was a beautiful thing, you know? An interesting… gig… for a change.
And you’re on your way back to Europe in a couple of days.
YES! Yes!
It seems it’s quite fashionable to be into Jimmy Scott these days. That wasn’t always the case.
Hey! Look-a there! [laughs]
Things have really changed for you in the past few years.
Yeah, baby. And it’s a joy to see a lot of it, you know? And you feel good that at least your work is communicated, you know?
What kind places you been playing in?
Nice halls. And then the last trip to Italy was around the holidays, and they were having their, like, gospel festival there. So we did a gospel segment for them. It was something different. Very interesting.
Gospel? That’s not something you’re known for.
Well, no, more jazz. But I did come from gospel teachings.
How’s that?
At home.
Really? Tell me about that.
Well hey, we went to, you know, the young gospel churches. And one of my churches was a universal spiritual church. And of course we were members. And our gospel training came through that. [AUTHOR’S NOTE: All the Scott children sang in church to their mother’s piano accompaniment.]
Was that when you started singing?
Yes, especially around the churches, doing the little things that kids from Sunday school used to do for plays around the holidays and things, you know? And we all did those kinds of things, like the Easters and the Mother’s Days and all. They created a little interest for those dates.
You were in the school plays?
Yes, of course.
Doing singing parts?
Some. And then some little light acting parts, you know—kind of gives you an edge.
Especially now that you’ve been doing some acting in films.
Yeah, hey! Actually, then, you never thought of it as, “Hey, this is going to be a life,” or anything like that. And then you wind up, you say, “My goodness. You did these things when you were kids.” You know?
What would you say is your first recollection of singing and really enjoying it, really feeling like this was a way to express yourself.
Uh… Actually, in school. We had a teacher who was an art teacher, and most of her class they could paint or whatever. But also she had an interest in inserting dramatics and doing a little acting with the boys in the class. And she’d have us dressed up and doing little plays. She started out by having me sing a song that was an old comic scene, “Ferdinand the Bull,” and there was a song that went with it (starts singing: Ferdinand, Ferdinand the bull with the delicate ego…). I had never sang say like a whole chorus of the song in school before. But at this time, this was a full chorus to sing, you see? And I sort of got attached there. It was just the joy of singing.
This was in front of the whole school?
In front of the school, yeah. Then [I] got known to be: “Oh, that’s the boy that sings at school.” You know, my buddies and all. [laughs] Yeah.
So you got a big response, big applause.
Oh, yeah! It was a wonderful thing.
That’ll make a big impression on a little kid.
Hey! It does. ’Cause, you know, people around you, they like you in some way and they express that. And it went along with the career, also. ’Cause where ever I would be around town, those old people that were around: “Oh, I remember him. Good!” And they were there. You know?
It’s interesting your teacher took that initiative.
Yes it is, yes it is. You see, in those days there was a lot of attention given to students that these days it’s not happening. It’s lacking. But I imagine times were different, I’m sure they were. And those teachers, they’d bend over especially to help a guy through. And lots of kids profited by the attention that was given by those teachers. I always say many of the kids today, they miss that opportunity to have those things happen in their life. You know? Yeah.
The fact that your teacher was interested in inserting some, as you say, “dramatics.”
Right!
And you’re certainly known for a singing style that’s quite dramatic.
And you think back, you think, “Well, my goodness. This teacher was thinking, real deep.” I say, well, wow. How many things she threw across us to do in these little plays that inserted many different angles of what the business was about, of what the dramatics was about. It was quite a help. You can say that. I’m grateful for those little days, believe me. Yeah.
Did you and friends sing on the street corner like kids in the ’50s?
No. I’ll tell you, when I was young, the little set that I was running around with, either they were trying to blow a horn or play a guitar or something like that. We’d all get together, though, and they organized a little band. Called Four Flats and the Sharps. They was a little five-piece band, and I did the little singing with the band. And then some of the girls, they did the little modern dancing for the shows. We organized little things like that the best we could. And somebody would respond, give a shot to do these things, they paid us and things.
How old were you around then?
16, 17. Out of high school.
At what point in all this did you start to realize that you had a voice that was somehow special or unique?
Well, it wasn’t a matter of special or unique. I realized that I could, you know, acquire a life in this business of song. That attracted me—that I could make it, [that] there is a way here for me to learn something. And I was fortunate to learn [about] things that happen to me even today, you know? I mean, hey, it just became part of what I was doing in my lxqife.
You realized you could make a career out of it.
Exactly!
You could make a living from it.
And I put a lot hope in taking it somewhere that’s meaningful, you know?
So was there a time when you were younger when you thought of doing something besides singing for a living?
Well, I mean, always Mom taught you, “If what you like ain’t there, you better get better get something ’til you get what you like.” You know what I mean. [laughs]
That came in handy later on, didn’t it?
Yes sir! When the show gig wasn’t there you sure had to pay the rent. Hey, you had to keep your head on you and keep things going ’til the next gig came, yeah.
Is it true that in the ’70s you were working at a hotel?
Yes.
As a bell hop?
Not a bell hop. I had the shipping and receiving of the Sheraton Hotel, all the stuff that came in and went out went through my office, and I was running the [loading] dock there.
And I understand that during the periods between record contracts that you would produce your own cassettes.
Oh yeah. Yeah. And then I made a collection of all the things that had been done. That has to be personal, because there are companies involved. But on occasion it was good just to give a person something to listen to. You’re not selling them, so I never thought of it in that manner. It was more to produce work than anything else.
You’re known almost exclusively as a ballad singer.
Oh yes. Yeah. Well, that was predominantly the style in the earlier years. There are a few [up tempo] things in there. You sort of mix it up sometimes. But yes, that [ballad singing] grew on as an attachment. And I do have a great fondness for the text of what the ballad songs are about.
Well, the way you perform them, it’s obvious that you’re really relating to what those songs are conveying.
Hey, it’s part of life. A lot of it can be, we look at it as, “Oh, this is a guy’s imagination.” But that’s something that could be lifelike—the story he’s telling, the song he’s relating, the thought he’s given. It’s nice.
Would you say that you particularly relate to the slow songs and the sad songs?
Not necessarily the sadness of them always. But the slower songs have a more direct effect as far as projection, for me. You know. I can respect the lyric a lot.
When I listen to you, what I feel you’re communicating a sense of almost devastating loneliness and longing, but there’s also with that a real feeling of resolve and resilience.
Yeah. Well, hey, you’ve got to keep moving on. You can’t pipe your mind in all of your hurts, you know?
You can’t what, I’m sorry?
[slowly] You can’t pipe your mind in all of your hurts in life. Once you pipe in, it’s destruction to yourself to do that. So you try to pipe it in and make it blend in with reality of time. You know?
Um… yeah. To me, it’s almost as if your theme is the song you have on the “Mood Indigo” record: “Smile, even though your heart is breaking.”
Yeah! And there’s times when that happens. Mmm hmmn.
How long has it been since you were in New Orleans?
Long time, baby. If I’m not mistaken, I think the last time we were there, Hampton was in there for a dance, and I was in his band at the time. And that’s got to be some 40 years ago. But New Orleans has always been with me as a place. There’s many things I remember about it. I remember going to that house where the lady made the most beautiful souse, and I could either buy it soup, or I could buy it gelled and sliced.
What, I’m sorry?
Souse. It comes in a soup form. But when it gels, it’s also a meat that a lot of people make sandwiches with. Like a souse, souse meat, they call it. It’s a Louisiana thing. They lay it out—oh yeah! [AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Food Lover’s Companion lists souse as “food that’s been pickled; the brine used in pickling; a pork luncheon meat bound with a brine-based gelatin mixture; a drunkard.”]
You used to come through New Orleans quite a bit?
When we did, we were on road shows and things, and we’d stop through there from time to time. We’d go and have a bowl of souse and really enjoy that. Good food. Good food.
You recorded a live album here in 1951 for Specialty.
Right. Uh, that was, uh, they had a dance. I think I was with Paul Gayten at the time, yeah.
How did that record come about?
Well, I just recently found out, within the last eight years or so, that they had made a record of it! A lot of those little things, they just came to the surface, you know, from those times. I knew nothing about it, but I remember the songs, the dates, the music and everything—you know, when I heard it. I remember the place. [AUTHOR’S NOTE: According to Jeff Hannusch’s “I Hear You Knockin,’ ” Rip’s Playhouse, where the show was taped, was at the corner of London Avenue and N. Dorgenois Street, near the Industrial Canal.]
Getting back to the fact that so many people admire you for the ballad thing, was there ever a time when you were tempted to record something more commercial, like R&B or rock?
Not necessarily. Not necessarily. There were so many levels of expression in music coming about. You just take your time, work out thoughts for your own projections, you know? There is so much great music out there, and I expect more to come. And I’m beginning to notice and get acquainted with several young writers that are beginning to project [that] they’re good, you know? That’s another thing that drew me to kids like John Lennon … If you are musically inclined in any way, you can realize they were reaching for another depth to the music. The way writers write, you can pretty well tell the level of expression they’re reaching for in a song, you know? And that’s why I felt the jazz base was good for them. You know what I mean, it gives them another expression.
You’re talking about the “Holding Back the Years” album (from 1998), where you cover some rock songs?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I say, and some of that with the jazz expression behind it, it gives another platform for it.
You did “The Crying Game,” “Jealous Guy,” “Nothing Compares to You” …
See, they have another life in them. So you just try and hope that people understand what you’re projecting.
A couple of year later you went back to some of the older songs like “Smile” and “Mood Indigo” and “Imagination.”
Right.
And on your newest record, you’re doing even older songs—“Pennies From Heaven,” “Strange Fruit.”
Right! And they were all songs that you dealt with in the era when I came up. This is music that was around, baby, surrounding you, to learn from. You dig what I’m saying? And it’s a beautiful thing.
Do you see doing another record of some more contemporary music?
Of course. Of course. There are little things out there that are nice too, if you decide to explore it, you know. And one thing that I tell any young singer, don’t fail to explore the art of singing. Explore it. Learn other forms of it. Learn to understand other forms of it a little better. Then you’ll appreciate it more, you’ll appreciate what you do more, and it will help you to do what you do right, you dig? Yeah.
You’ve been through the highs and lows. I think there’s probably more demand for you now than there has been in many years.
Ever. Ever.
Perhaps you’re more mentally prepared for it these days than you were when you were younger.
Well that definitely can be true, and I can accept that. Because say I’ve seen a lot of breakaways in people’s careers, you know what I mean? And fortunately, it makes you aware that hey, all this could be you. This is an opportunity. If they can produce something good, okay, that’s all I ask. If it will produce something good, if it will encourage something good. Hey, that’s all you can ask for, baby. If you put it in and put it in right, it works out.
Looking back, anything you would have done differently?
I don’t know, and I wouldn’t say that because we’re all going to stumble somewhere, right? Who knows when you’re going to stumble? So you stumble your way through, and you should learn as you go. And you pay attention. You do. That’s where it’s at.
