At the age of 73, Jimmy Scott is, these days, no longer known as Little Jimmy Scott. That said, this remarkable man still has no real use for a shaving mirror having virtually stopped growing before he even got to five feet. And so, stuck in a kind of permanent pre-pubescence due to a condition known as Kallman's Syndrome, Jimmy Scott is one of popular music's mysterious figures, unknown to many and yet hailed by those who have heard him as the greatest singer of all. His strange feminine voice, once heard, is both astonishing and unforgettable - there is quite simply nobody who can put a song through the wringer like Jimmy Scott.
"I have to accept the fact that it was totally a gift. After my mother passed on - when you're 13 years old you know - which way are you going? You dig? And I walked up into this thing and it became a part of my life. I remember going to the Five and Ten and they used to have piano players in there playing the new songs that were coming out. Then they began selling the little booklets with nothing but the lyrics. They were selling them for 10 or 15 cents and that's where I first learned the song There I Said It Again. I'll never forget going and buying this book because I had just heard it on the radio. That's how I learned the songs. "It didn't come by somebody taking me off and saying: `You gotta sing this note or that note' or anything. It was just my desire and love for the music and to express it the best way I can and that was through voice."
Born in Cleveland in 1925, Jimmy Scott was one of 10 children. His first singing experience was in church, where his mother Justine was organist, and his first taste of show business came in the role of Ferdinand-the-Bull in a school performance. Tragedy struck first in his teens when his mother was killed in a car crash and, to make matters worse, the children were subsequently packed off to foster homes. It is hard not to imagine that it is precisely this early grief that informs some of Jimmy Scott's most harrowing performances, songs such as Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child which he sings with near unbearable feeling. Jimmy found something of a new mother in Estelle Young (Caledonia of the Louis Jordan song) who took Jimmy on tour with her in her variety tent shows and introduced him to the real world of showbusiness.
"She did a body contortion act - the most beautiful body you ever saw in your life. And then she'd do a comedy act after her contortion act. Her experience was so great and she began teaching young artists. Ruth Brown was another. So fortunately I had the road experience and had been trained through that. She was the mother of my career and I have to give credit to her. She mothered all of the kids and she encouraged them to do the best they could. "You see, I had a desire to make money, buy a home for my family and share with my family. I was 17, 18, 19 years old, out there singing, and I knew that if I could get the public to listen, I would be able to make the money to buy this home and the family could live together. My thing was an anxiety to be heard as a person. That was the beginning of it. Then when that didn't materialise, the things I wanted, then I began learning that being in the business was more of an education and a struggle to learn. And that was more important than the more material aspects that I wanted out of it. But at that age I was thinking that this thing should have came by now!"
In 1948 Scott joined Lionel Hampton's band. He speaks highly of Hampton as an energetic and talented bandleader - someone who launched the careers of so many in the jazz field, among them Charles Mingus, Dinah Washington, Quincy Jones, Dexter Gordon and others. And it was with Hamp that Scott scored his first hit, Everybody's Somebody's Fool - a trademark Scott heart-breaker. The effect his singing had on an audience was devastating.
At first they wondered who this little child was. Or, more awkwardly, who was this little girl dressed as man? But then, once he began to sing in his huge and entirely unique voice they, according to legend, began to weep openly. This was the saddest and most heart-breaking sound imaginable, and all of it coming from this tiny frame, this strange little figure holding an anguished pose in his outsize tuxedo.
"I got stronger about it in later years, but I have come to tears on the stage myself. Sometimes it's something in the song which reflects something in you or your life. You're singing and it comes upon you at a time where you think, hey I wish this hadn't happened in life or that hadn't happened in life, but, hey, it did and I'm singing this song. And then you say, well OK, it's all gone now, you had that moment of thought and you have to learn to shake it.
"I've always sung like this, even before I joined Hampton. It's like anything else. You read the story, it's like a poem and once you read it, you ask yourself: how would I express it? And there it is. And if you find an honest expression for it, it doesn't matter about it not being your lyric. The story reveals something through your expressive power, through you. I would never do it to a point where it would aggravate the writer and if I couldn't do it for him and do a professional performance, I'd leave his song alone. It has to do with an inner feeling. Any person's expression is like that. When you listen to singers sing, you know where the heart is."
Jimmy Scott's career has been an exceptionally tough one. To make a long story short, it has been a catalogue of contractual and financial disasters. He signed first to the Roost label and never got paid. He later signed to the Savoy label where as the story goes, he was held in a bad contract and apparently blackballed whenever he complained about it.
Forced to play all manner of dives and barely making a living, Scott's big break seemed to have finally arrived when Ray Charles invited him to record for his new Tangerine label. Charles himself oversaw the whole thing and played piano on the record meaning that, at last, there was a sympathetic recording which revealed the full potential of Jimmy Scott. But disaster struck again. Herman Lubinsky at Savoy maintained that Scott was still under contract to him and the record was withdrawn. Jimmy withdrew also and went back to Cleveland to work as a shipping clerk at the Sheraton Hotel. Two sessions were recorded for Atlantic Records but once again Savoy's lawyers pulled the plug and again a Jimmy Scott record was taken off the market. Jimmy was off the scene for 20 years.
"At the moment when it's happening in a sense you'd say it was devastating. But then you back off and take toll and decide what is more important. Are you going to let this destroy your endeavour to present yourself as artist? What did you go out there for? You learn that some of it, not all of it, is part of the lows in life. There might be times when you play a gig and the man didn't have enough to pay nobody. "Some of those incidents like that I can accept because maybe if you sat down and looked at the crowd, maybe they didn't have too many people there and back then they didn't know nothing about advertising. Back then you just didn't know so you accepted those things and you learned from them. And one thing you must accept is that it's always an advantage to learn something about life."
In the 1980s Jimmy, with the support of his wife Earlene, began singing again, mainly in the sorts of small dives he had played in his youth. Apart from that, the only singing he had been doing was for old-age pensioners at the weekends. Luckily, however, his old fans had not forgotten him - notably the songwriter Doc Pomus who devoted a lot of energy to trying to secure him a recording contract. Few would listen.
Pomus introduced Scott to Lou Reed who took him on the road, as did David Byrne, but their frequent testimonies on Scott's behalf had no effect on record company executives who couldn't quite see how someone like Jimmy Scott would fit in with their marketing strategy. They wouldn't even listen. Ironically, it was at his own funeral that Doc Pomus finally forced the record business to pay attention to Jimmy Scott. It was written into his will that Scott would sing at the service. He sang Someone Who'll Watch Over Me with Dr John on the organ and, as his voice began to fill the church, the executives from Warners immediately demanded to know who he was and if he had a record deal. It was Doc Pomus's last great act and Jimmy was signed. He was suddenly back in business, even making a bizarre appearance in Twin Peaks.
A brand new album will be issued next month and, many years too late, the world is starting to discover Jimmy Scott. All the great singers have acknowledged him and anyone who hears him is simply forced to reassess everything they think they know about singers and the song. Strange to think that a simple injection might well have cured his condition, made his life less difficult and made him less of a target for abuse and misunderstanding - but then it would also certainly have destroyed the saddest, loneliest and most magnificent voice ever - bar none.
"I know many people were cruel because I got many cracks on the stage. See I looked so young and didn't have no hair on my face, and they'd say I was a girl. But you learn how to ignore these things, and that was the experience I got from being with somebody like Estelle. You see, they were in the learning stage about this condition. They had not progressed into what they know about it now. But when I was coming up, and remember I was born in 1925, they hadn't invented the help they have today. Another part of it was that I refused the treatment because it was too late. You've got to be caught at an early age. I refused it. I had already had the experience with my mother explaining before she passed on that she did not want my brother or I to be part of an experiment so she pulled us from it. But out of it God rewarded me.
"That's the beauty that comes from the music: hey this is the true heart here, the true voice. And if it has that truth in it then somebody out there is going to understand it. And if there's one, there will be many - you dig? It's passing a message to each other and what better message to pass than messages of expressions of love? In a world with the problems that we're having today, my God we need a little love."