As a close-up of Matt Dillon's anguished face gives way to the end credits of Albino Alligator - actor Kevin Spacey's heist-gone-wrong directorial debut - Michael Stipe's distinctive vocals can be heard. Then a few bars later, there drifts in an older, curiously androgynous voice. Pained and weary, it sings: "Go ill wind, go away, skies are all so grey . . ." The author of this lonely sound is one Jimmy Scott, a native of Ohio, whose career has secretly blossomed since the early 1990's. A favourite with the film crowd, he has contributed to songs on the soundtracks of Glengarry Glen Ross and A Rage In Harlem, as well as giving request performances at the wedding of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, and at a Carnegie Hall jazz evening hosted by Clint Eastwood.
Scott may be virtually unknown to the public, but he is revered by musicians. Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Liza Minelli, Richard Thompson, Lou Reed and The Grateful Dead are all admirers.
"I've seen Jimmy Scott perform at a club and the emotion he brings to a song is incredible," says David Byrne of the man who turned Talking Heads's Heaven into a gospel slow-burner. "He can be half-way through a song before you recognise what it is. He can take one line and stretch it out to three minutes." Scott is hot, but this is no new boy on the make. Last month he turned 72, and can look back on one of the most extraordinary careers in American popular music, albeit one blighted by personal sadness and almost extinguished by the worst aspects of the industry. Because of disastrous luck, it has taken years for the chilling beauty of his male alto voice to be truly recognised.
One of 10 children, James Victor Scott was born in Cleveland in 1927. His mother, a pianist, was killed in a car accident when he was 13. The family scattered to foster homes. It was a key episode which haunts Scott to this day and still informs his work.
"At the time it's happening, you think it's tragic. My desire for family is strongly in there. It's part of me when I sing," he explains, sitting on the edge of his bed in a midtown Manhattan hotel prior to a show at the new Birdland club. Later that evening, to hear him perform a pin-drop version of Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child is to experience this grief first-hand and also to understand why, decades before, at the old Birdland uptown, Charlie Parker did not hesitate to get him to sing with his group.
Scott experienced problems as a teenager, when he mysteriously stopped growing after he reached four feet 11 inches, and his voice remained high-pitched and feminine. He was suffering from Kallman's Syndrome, a hereditary, hormonal deficiency which results in sustained pre-adolescence. This can now be treated by hormone injections, but as Scott loathes needles and is concerned about the effect on his voice, he has never taken the treatment.
Because some considered him to be gay or possibly a drag artist - maybe even a child - he would carry a pistol to protect himself from harassment or to ward off unwanted admirers. On other occasions it ensured he was well paid. But his charm and sex appeal - women still swoon at his shows - are undeniable. His stagecraft was learnt in the tent shows of the South and Mid-West when he toured with the legendary contortionist, Estelle "Caledonia" Young. Scott's first break came in 1948 when Lionel Hampton asked him to sing with his big band 18 months after he'd spotted him in a contest. "Hamp" gave Scott his first hit and his signature tune, Every- body's Somebody's Fool, which defined Scott's searing ballad style.
"It was dramatic when Jimmy came out in a solo spot," recalled Quincy Jones, who played trumpet in the band. "He'd just stand there with his shoulders hunched and his eyes closed and his head tilted to one side. He sang like a horn - he sang with the melodic concept of an instrument. It's a very emotional, soul-penetrating style. Jimmy used to tear my heart out every night."
WITHIN a year, Scott had left to pursue a solo career, issuing a handful of recordings, including a first ever classic reading of The Masquerade Is Over - but to little effect, although he was booked to perform at President Eisenhower's inauguration. In 1955 he unwittingly committed professional suicide by signing with Savoy Records of Newark. He recorded achingly intense songs such as Imagination and When Did You Leave Heaven, and in return the label's owner, lawyer Herman Lubinsky, exploited him mercilessly.
"This man was an outright bully," explains Scott. "He was shrewd; he knew things that the average person in the business isn't aware of. His greed and selfishness caused problems for artists." Then in 1962 came a glimmer of hope. Ray Charles, who had known and admired him for many years, signed him to his label, Tangerine. Scott soon found himself in a Californian studio with Charles at the piano, a live string section and top-flight arrangements by Gerald Wilson and Marty Palch. The result, Love Is Wonderful, is considered one of the great Scott albums. Of it, Scott commented: "This was the one."
Herman Lubinsky didn't agree. He claimed Scott was still under contract to him and had the album pulled. Devastated, Scott returned to Cleveland, got a job as a shipping clerk at his local Sheraton Hotel and sang to pensioners at the weekend. But another benefactor, producer Joel Dorn, remembered one of his performances when he was squeezed in between the Coasters and Charles himself at the Harlem Apollo in 1960.
"Sandwiched in between thunder and lightning," said Dorn, "Jimmy slew that audience with a sword made of whispers." He got Scott a deal with Atlantic, resulting in another great recording, The Source. Incredibly, the vindictive Lubinsky again waved legal papers and the album disappeared. As the label had contracted him to record a second album, he re-entered the studio to make yet another stillborn work.
"Yes, I did go back in," confirms Scott. "If I had been someone they valued, they would have spent the money to clear all this. I knew there was no contract. Lubinsky knew there was no contract - but my word against Lubinsky's in his position? They knew I didn't have the money to fight it."
Scott went home to care for his ailing father, and didn't set foot on stage again until the mid-eighties. Those who cared about him, such as R&B singer Ruth Brown, actor Joe Pesci and veteran songwriter Doc Pomus, tried to keep his name alive. Pomus was already ill and knowing that every East Coast record executive would attend his funeral, he had it written into his will that Scott should sing Someone To Watch Over Me, accompanied by Dr John, at his service. So in 1991, the man who made Madonna, Seymour Stein of Sire Records, moved by what he heard at St John's Cathedral, signed Scott.
With the release the following year of the acclaimed All The Way, people began to wake up to "The Angel Of Jazz".
"That sort of began the resurgence of my career . . . because after the passing of the family, my father and mother . . ." Scott's voice trails off momentarily - "I came to New York quite surprised that people remembered my work." Within quick succession Lou Reed asked him to sing on Magic And Loss, his tribute to Pomus, and film director David Lynch, after seeing Scott live in a Hollywood theatre, filmed him singing in the Red Room for the final episode of Twin Peaks.
SCOTT has just signed with Rykodisc, and is flicking through the songbooks of Elvis Costello, John Hiatt and Joni Mitchell, picking new material to perform. He has sung jazz, R&B and gospel, influenced Marvin Gaye, Frankie Valli and, some say, Michael Jackson - how does he define what he does? "Just a singer, and a stylist. It's also the story a song tells. We all have loved or admired something we couldn't have because of rejection. It's natural for me," Scott smiles angelically. "I just put all of my emotions into that song." Lou Reed on Jimmy Scott: "The most extraordinary voice I've ever heard in my life." Ray Charles: "Jimmy had soul way back when people weren't using the word." David Byrne: "The emotion that he brings to a song is incredible. The audience is transfixed by this strange creature."
