The Fabulous Songs of Jimmy Scott

The hallmark of Jimmy Scott’s debut had been Howard Bigg’s spare, vibraphone-led arrangements; on his sophomore release, Scott sang against a backdrop of nightclub horns. The Fabulous Songs of Jimmy Scott completes the singer’s golden trilogy of albums for Savoy, and this time, Scott’s soaring soprano is paired with a full string section. At the time, many labels awkwardly imposed string arrangements onto recordings by black singers as a way to make them more palatable to mainstream audiences, but the strings here appear in slashing, swelling torrents, serving only to heighten the intensity of Scott’s voice. “Please Forgive Me” unfolds with unnerving stabs of strings that seem borrowed from Psycho, while “If I Ever Lost You” becomes a torrid dialogue between Scott and his orchestra. Scott’s music is constantly playing out the tension between earthly fates and otherworldly dreams; at times the drama is almost too much to bear. With its operatic passion and bluesy undercurrents, his version of “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” is a career performance.