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Features Disc of the day
Jimmy Scott
The Source
(Atlantic, 1970)
You really can't call it a comeback...
I recall more than one house-guest who, upon hearing this album for the first time, studied the album sleeve, and thought that Jimmy Scott was an unlikely name for the afro-haired female on the cover. Given the strange beauty bound up in Scott's eerie voice and the deep torch-song sadness he invests in these tracks, it's not as foolish a mistake as it first seems. Almost strangled by his own umbilical chord when he was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1925, Scott was also stricken with Kallmann Syndrome, a hormonal defect which seriously damaged his health, restricted his growth and left him with a high contralto voice. Abandoned by his deadbeat father, Scott lost his mother at the age of 12 (she bled to death when a car ripped off her arm as she was trying to save her daughter from running in front of it). By the time of this recording, Scott had already been singing for thirty years, starting out on the Cleveland club circuit before joining Lionel Hampton's Band in 1948. Sessions came and went, many for the tight-fisted Savoy Records, who refused to release Scott from his handcuff contract. A proposed comeback album for Ray Charles' Tangerine Records in 1962 was removed from shelves a month after release, and a similar fate befell this masterpiece in 1970.
Recorded for Atlantic by friend and producer Joel Dorn, The Source captures Scott in transcendental realm, drifting like the smoke through the black framework of a haunted Manhattan. His cover of Exodus, turns Pat Boone's biblical belter into some spectral shadow of Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come, while Arif Mardin's rueful reworking of On Broadway strips it entirely of hope, Scott's narrator already beaten and bound for the bus home before we're one verse in. In fact, by the time you're at the halfway point with Scott's cover of Unchained Melody ("Time goes by / So slowly / And time can do / So much") it's a steely heart that won't have felt the hot tears well up, such is the otherworldly sadness possessed by this album.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 05/03/2010
Further Listening
Jimmy Scott – Falling In Love Is Wonderful (Rhino, 2003)
Roberta Flack – First Take (Atlantic, 1969)
Nina Simone – Wild Is The Wind (Verve, 1966)
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Jimmy Scott is a wonderful singer. The two records, this and "Falling in love is wonderful" are a must. Elation -Elegance- Exaltation (John Coltrane dixit)
Posted by carneham at 8:30 PM GMT 07/03/2010 Report Abuse
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Jimmy Scott is a wonderful singer. This record and "Fallin' in love is wonderful" are a must.
Elation.Elegance- Exaltation (John Coltrane dixit)
Posted by carneham at 8:35 PM GMT 07/03/2010 Report Abuse
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His version of "All or Nothing at All" is my favorite. Not sure what album it is on.
Posted by wrecksracer at 5:49 PM GMT 08/03/2010 Report Abuse
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