

He influenced vocalists from Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye to Prince, Nancy Wilson and Frank Sinatra. Madonna called him ‘the only singer who makes me cry’. The legendary songwriting hitmaker Doc Pomus described his powers to ‘touch you in your deepest parts and even find spots that you never know you had’. But the unique contralto-voiced singer "Little" Jimmy Scott, who died at 88 on Thursday, was one of jazz and R&B’s best-kept secrets for years.

Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

Though his jazz career began in the late 1940s, Scott was sidelined to hotel clerking and odd jobs from the 60s to the 80s by a protracted record-rights dispute – until after an unexpected renaissance in 1992, he found himself a sixtysomething cult star. But that famously ethereal, high-register power and plaintive soulfulness (along with his diminutive stature, a symptom of the hormone-related Kallmann’s Syndrome) had first brought Scott to jazz fans’ notice as a 23-year-old, with Lionel Hampton’s popular orchestra. Hampton gave the newcomer the "Little Jimmy" nickname that stuck for life, and the singer gave Hampton a memorable interpretation of the ballad Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool, which was later to become a 1960 pop hit for Connie Francis. Scott was to return to the song throughout his career.

They Say It’s Wonderful

He recorded for the Roost and Savoy jazz labels in the 1950s, but when an enthusiastic Ray Charles signed Scott to his Tangerine label in 1962 – to make the album Falling In Love Is Wonderful – Savoy claimed breach of contract and blocked the new album’s distribution. So the world had to wait a while to hear a historic collaboration between two soul-jazz giants.

Sycamore Trees

As his label problems mounted, Scott quit the business, returned to his native Cleveland, and did whatever routine jobs he could to pay the rent. He eventually moved back to New York in the 1980s, and began gigging again, but it was his impromptu performance of Someone to Watch Over Me at his friend Doc Pomus’s funeral in 1991 that issued Scott’s real wakeup call to the music business and the public, and brought him back to the spotlight he remained in for rest of his life.

Scott’s comeback album All the Way, for the Sire label, was then nominated for a Grammy, he sang at Bill Clinton’s inaugural parties, began touring the globe, and taking part in challenging new collaborations – like his haunting appearance on the Twin Peaks soundtrack for filmmaker David Lynch.

For All We Know

That was followed by his anguished duet on the 30s ballad For All We Know with soul-saxist and kindred spirit in sound David Sanborn, on the latter’s 1995 album Pearls.

Nothing Compares 2 U

Scott’s open-mindedness and renewed enthusiasm allowed him to invest much more contemporary materials with his spinetingling eloquence – as he did for his 1988 album Holding Back the Years, on a startling cover of the Prince/Sinéad O’Connor hit, Nothing Compares 2 U.