Little Big Man
Jimmy Scott counts his blessings
By Scott Jordan
WHO: Little Jimmy Scott & the Jazz Expressions
WHEN: 2:15 p.m., Saturday, April 28
WHERE: BET On Jazz/WWOZ Jazz Tent
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Jimmy Scott’s Jazz Fest debut is his first New Orleans appearance since performing with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in the 1950s.
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It’s the sound of a child’s innocence, a woman’s sensuality and the hard wisdom of 76 years of failure, perseverance and triumph. Few instruments in American popular music are as disarming as the voice of Little Jimmy Scott, the jazzman with a boy’s alto voice. Scott’s career has been filled with more valleys than peaks, but the spring of 2001 finds him reaching a whole new generation of fans, and touting a superb new album, Over the Rainbow (Milestone). For Scott, the twilight of his career is unfolding as a bright new beginning.
“It’s a blessing, babe,” he says, calling from his Cleveland home. “Naturally, you want to have the opportunity to have your work be heard, and it’s inspiring that some of it is beginning to get out there.”
In a heartwarming bit of karma, there is another “new” Jimmy Scott CD also gracing record stores — his 1969 masterpiece, The Source, originally recorded for Atlantic Records, now being reissued by Label M. That album, a spare and haunting session where Scott delivers emotional, operatic versions of standards like “Exodus” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” was killed upon its initial release due to business disputes. His earlier 1960s session with Ray Charles, Falling in Love Is Wonderful, met the same fate. Those successive blows proved too much for Scott, who often felt slighted after first hitting the charts in 1950 with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” He put an early death knell on his career, and went home to work for the next 13 years as a shipping clerk and nurse’s aid.
“There were a couple of clubs I’d sing at on occasion, mostly on weekends,” remembers Scott. “I had my work hooked up so I had three days a week off. I didn’t sing all the time, but kept in touch with the system as best I could.”
It’s surprising Scott didn’t completely walk away from performing. Because of Kallman’s Syndrome, the hormonal disorder that gave him his diminutive stature and feminine voice, his talent was sometimes overshadowed by his appearance. His first professional job — and first visit to New Orleans — was with a traveling carnival show filled with contortionists and snake-oil salesmen. “This was back in the ’40s, with Estelle Young,” remembers Scott. “We used to go on the road and sell Hadicol solution [a high-alcohol content ‘medicine.’].”
A subsequent job with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra improved Scott’s outlook, but he was never able to break through to a mainstream audience his first go-around. “The earlier parts of my career, it was like, ‘How are you going to deal with this?’” he says. “I remember being surrounded by Billy Eckstine and Johnny Hartman — all these baritone styles were around, and you had to respect the talent. I was thinking, ah, to be able to sing like a baritone. For the longest time, no one would have ever believed that was my voice. That went on for some time, then they’d say, ‘Hey, that’s Jimmy Scott.’”
That same sentiment of wonder prompted a handful of music industry heavyweights, including legendary songwriter Doc Pomus and executive Seymour Stein, to coax Scott out of retirement in the early ’90s. Before long, Scott was the vocalist of choice for a long list of luminaries, including Lou Reed (who had Scott sing vocals on his Magic and Loss album) and Madonna (who gave Scott a cameo in one of her videos). In true Scott fashion, he’s non-plussed about his new fans’ celebrity status.
“Those two entertainers, baby, there’s things about them that showed struggling,” he says. “Lou’s taking poetry and turning it into such a feat with his music, expressing what’s in himself. The reason he was successful with the Velvet Underground, is all of those songs had some meaning to somebody. Madonna, for a young girl, she reminds me of a Mae West, you dig? She earned her way. Nobody laid no silver platter out for her. So you got to give it to her.”
And you’ve got to hand it to Scott, who’s making one more determined run at the brass ring, his voice as alluring as ever. “You never get too old to believe,” he says. “You’ve got to have the hope, faith and determination to move on. It’s all in how things come about in your life, and adjusting, and trying to control and handle your life, and making music an important place in your life.
“I’m not ignoring the fact that there’s some stupid crap out there. But hey, something’s gotta give.” .
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