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"Mother's Day Magic"

Jimmy Scott

Sunday, May 14 • 7pm

“He has the voice of an angel and can break your heart.”—Lou Reed

Treat Mom to the sound of one of jazz’s greatest singers! Championed through the years by artists as wide-ranging as Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, and Madonna, Jimmy Scott’s alto is one of the most arresting and poignant voices in all of American music—the voice of “someone who has been there, lived through troubles and pain, and come out the other side” (Down Beat).

Program Notes

While he may downplay his mastery of interpretation, there’s nothing understated about his performances. Catching Jimmy Scott live is a transfixing experience. A diminutive man with a high-pitched voice, the veteran sings like no other vocalist in pop or jazz music, employing an idiosyncratic phrasing that’s a striking mix of clipped syllables and quivering vibrato. A torch singer par excellence, Scott has been known to make crusty old critics weep. He was Billie Holiday’s favorite vocalist, Madonna once said that he “is the only singer who makes me cry,” and Bonnie Raitt heralded him as “the singer’s singer.”

Scott broke into the business of interpreting music with heart-wrenching, soul-penetrating emotion when he was hired to perform in the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in 1948. He recalls, “Lionel was my school. Who better can you learn from to learn the values and expressive quality of jazz?” With Hamp, Scott scored his first hit, “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” Soon after he launched his solo career, touring with the Paul Gayten Band and signing on with the Savoy Jazz label which released several of Scott’s R&B chart-scalers, including “Don’t Cry Baby” and “(I’m Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over.”

After several years on the sidelines, Scott’s career was reborn in the ‘90s when he was featured in director David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks, which led to a new recording contract with Warner Bros. and the hit 1998 album Holding Back the Years, produced by Don Was and featuring pianist Jacky Terrasson. Lou Reed, a Scott fan, penned the liner notes, writing, “When the song stops with Jimmy’s last note, we’re back in the world as it was. Not quite so pretty, not quite so passionate. And we can only wait for Jimmy to sing again and take us that little bit higher.”

In recent years, Scott has recorded several albums of romantic, heart-wrenching standards, many produced by the legendary Todd Barkan. As for Scott’s outlook on getting onstage? He once said, “I love performing. You live with reality every day. You can’t miss it. We can try to avoid a lot of trials in life, but it’s better to overcome than avoid. That’s what music has been for me. It’s been my opportunity to overcome.”

— Dan Ouellette