Faith in Time
The Life of Jimmy Scott
"The voice of Jimmy Scott is high-pitched and androgynous, transcending gender and age, penetrating the listener with pure heartbreak. It made him a jazz star in the 1950s, influenced legends from Marvin Gaye to Nancy Wilson in the 1960s, and in the 1990s thrust him back into the limelight. But the beauty of Scott's voice is hard-earned.". "Faith in Time captures the texture of Jimmy Scott's voice like no one ever has - honest, spirited, angry, laconic, cool - and in its pages he recounts his jazz life for the first time: touring as Lionel Hampton's star vocalist; playing with Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Stan Getz; club-hopping with Billie Holiday - whose voice parallels his own. But Faith in Time is also a rare look at a music industry that cheated, strung out, and preyed on the weak. In 1960, Scott was on top of his game. Three years later, contract disputes had forced his masterpiece, produced by Ray Charles, off the shelves. Out of money and plagued by anguished relationships with women and a deep mistrust of agents and managers, he returned home to Cleveland. There, for nearly three decades, he worked quietly as a nurse's aide and a shipping clerk, wrestling with poverty and drink. Fans assumed he had died.". "Then, in 1991, Jimmy Scott's star began rising again. After singing at the funeral of his old friend, songwriter Doc Pomus, and reducing a roomful of music executives to tears, he suddenly had a new record deal. He has been recording and touring ever since, and at 77 years of age counts among his devoted fans Madonna, Lou Reed, David Lynch, and Ethan Hawke, making cameo appearances in their videos, concerts, series, and films.". "With full cooperation from Scott, his siblings, his ex-wives, and colleagues from Ray Charles to Ruth Brown, Faith in Time is at once an intimate biography, an invaluable history of the years spanning big band to bebop to pop, and the poignant story of a man whose ethereal voice refuses to fade away with time."--BOOK JACKET.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Nonfiction
Use these as starting points rather than limits; the most memorable books often stretch beyond their catalog labels.
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Balanced tone · Measured pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3068-1088-6
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL9545655M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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