LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Jimmy Scott: Lionel Hampton
built 267 days ago
Jimmy Scott was free as a bird -- or so he thought. Having sung with Lionel Hampton and Charlie Parker in the '50s, he was already a profound influence on artists like Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson (you see, Jimmy had Kallman's Syndrome, which meant that he looked like a somewhat androgynous teenager and sang in a mostly female range).
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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.
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After leaving Hampton, Scott played for a short time with the Paul Gayten Band and then in 1950 embarked on a solo career. Jimmy recorded for the Roost label that year. But he soon left the Roost label to record with Decca. Then, not finding his situation at Decca to his liking, Jimmy returned to Roost. Jimmy’s main reason for returning to Roost was that he liked working with producer Fred Mendelsohn. It seemed that the two men shared the same musical sensibilities.
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Scott's hit and three other songs recorded with the Hampton orchestra, along with early Fifties solo sides for the Coral and Brunswick labels, were reissued in 1999 on the GRP CD Everybody's Somebody's Fool. Also released that year was the three-CD The Savoy Years and More containing his 1952 recordings for Roost Records and his 1955-75 output for Savoy. Scott ... made a magnificent album for Ray Charles's Tangerine label and another for Atlantic, but Savoy threatened suit and had both suppressed.
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For shortly afterwards, Jimmy found himself a soloist in Lionel Hampton’s famous big band in 1948 and records his first hit Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. Despite this success, Jimmy soon grew tired of being in the Lionel Hampton Band. “The one thing you knew when you were in that band,” Jimmy said of his days performing with Hampton in the documentary, “is that it was all about Hampton.” This comment may have more to do with Jimmy’s desire to develop his own talent than any real fault possessed by Hampton.
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[T]he true drama lies in Scott's troubled recording career. On his first big 78rpm hit, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool," with Lionel Hampton's band, his name was nowhere to be found. A major vinyl collaboration with Charlie Parker was wrongly attributed to Chubby Newsome. A 1963 breakthrough Scott solo LP produced by Ray Charles, considered by some to be one of the two or three greatest vocal albums ever pressed, was pulled shortly after release because of lawsuit threats by a venal label owner ("There was a sort of honor among thieves, but Jimmy happened upon the one thief with no honor.").
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