Milestone Profiles: Jimmy Scott
Jimmy Scott
Label:
Milestone
Album Notes
Absolutely no one sounds like Jimmy Scott. His penetrating, almost feminine tenor, with its wide vibrato and behind-the-beat phrasing, absorbs every nuance of a lyric. Originally billed as "Little Jimmy Scott" when in 1950 he scored his first major hit ("Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool") with the Lionel Hampton orchestra, the diminutive vocalist had fallen into obscurity during the 1970s and ’80s before his rediscovery in the 1990s. Signed to Milestone Records on the cusp of the 21st century, Scott (b. 1925) made a series of deeply affecting discs, comprised mostly of his hallmark blue ballads.
Eight of the eleven performances herein are pure jazz balladry of the highest order, notably "If I Should Lose You," "Moonglow," the harrowing "Strange Fruit," and "Darn That Dream," the latter featuring Wynton Marsalis’s candlelit trumpet. Elsewhere, the guest list is similarly top-drawer. Jimmy Scott, master jazz balladeer, brings heartbreak, wisdom, and raw honesty to every word he sings.