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Jimmy Scott was born JamesVictor Scott on July 17, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio into a family of ten. As a child Jimmy got his first singing experience by his mother’s side at the family piano, and later, in church choir. At thirteen, he was orphaned after a drunk driver killed his mother.

He first rose to prominence as “Little Jimmy Scott”, a moniker given by Hampton when he was in the Lionel Hampton Band when he sang lead on the late 1940s hit “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, recorded in December 1949, and which became a top ten R&B hit in 1950^, though label credit went to “Lionel Hampton. This omission of credit was not only a slight to Scott’s talent but a huge blow to his career. A similar professional insult occurred several years later when his vocal on “Embraceable You” with Charlie Parker, on the album One Night in Birdland, was credited to female vocalist Chubby Newsome.

By 1963 it looked as though Scott’s luck had changed: he signed to Ray Charles’ Tangerine Records label, under the supervision of Charles himself, creating what is considered by many to be one of the great jazz vocal albums of all time, Falling in Love is Wonderful. However, owing to obligations on an earlier contract that Scott had signed with Herman Lubinsky, the record was withdrawn in a matter of days, while Scott was on honeymoon. The album was not re-released for forty years. His career subsequently faded by the late 1960s and he returned to his native Cleveland to work as a hospital orderly, shipping clerk and as an elevator operator in a hotel.

In 1991 Scott eventually resurfaced when he sang at the funeral of his long-time friend Doc Pomus, an event that single-handedly sparked his career renaissance. Afterwards Lou Reed recruited him to sing backup on the track “Power and Glory” from his 1992 album Magic and Loss, which was inspired, to an extent, by Pomus’s death. That same year Sire Records released the album All The Way with Kenny Barron, Ron Carter and David “Fathead” Newman for which he was nominated for a Grammy. He followed this up with Dream, Heaven, Holding Back The Years, and in 1999, his early Decca and Savoy recordings were re-released on CD.

Scott’s career spanned sixty-five years and during that time he performed at the inaugurations of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953) and President Bill Clinton (1993) performing the same song, “Why Was I Born?”. He has received an NEA Jazz Master Award, the Kennedy Center’s Jazz In Our Time Living Legend Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Foundation of America, Inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame and conducted a “two-day video interview with the Smithsonian Institute for the National Archives.

Though he looked so young, and was short and of slight build, it was his extraordinary phrasing and romantic feeling that made him a favorite singer of fellow artists such as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Frankie Valli, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson. The list of luminaries he performed with is extensive but includes Quincy Jones, Sarah Vaughan, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell and numerous others. Vocalist Jimmy Scott passed away of cardiac arrest on June 12, 2014 at the age of 88. He was sleep at his home in Las Vegas.

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