BOBBY SCOTT
SLOWLY
[1] Slowly
(David Rikson/Kermit Goell)
Great Foreign Songs, lnc./ Full Keel Music (ASCAP)
[2] Jean
(Rod McKuen)
Warner Brothers Music (ASCAP)
[3] The Rainbow Connection (Paul Williams/Kenny Ascher)
Muppet Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
[4] When I Fall in Love
(Eddie Heyman/Victor Young)
Warner Brothers Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
[5] Spend an Evening (Harold Adamson/). McHugh)
Polygram lnternational/EMI-
Robbins Catalogue, Inc. (ASCAP)
[6] Long About Now
(Fred Hellerman/Fran Minkoff)
Appleseed Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
[7] You Turned the Tables on Me (Sidney Mitchell/Louis Alter)
Gladys Music/Movietone Music/ Chappell & Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
[8] Hi Lily Hi Lo
(Helen Deutsch/Bronislau Kaper)
EMI-Robbins Catalogue, Inc. (ASCAP)
[9] Am I Blue
(Grant Clarke/Harry Akst)
Warner Brothers Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
[10] Music Maestro Please (Herbert Magidson/ Allie Wrubel)
Bourne Co. (ASCAP)
[11] This Is My Country (Bobby Scott/Joe Scott)
Jeimy Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
Bobby Scott, piano, voice
Steve LaSpina, bass
Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar
Vinnie Bell, guitar on tracks 7 and 9
Paul Jost, drums
I remember when Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass recorded 'A Taste of Honey.' It was played too fast and too silly, as if the sound track of an ad for bubble gum. It was, being the '60s, that decade of bubble gum, a humongous success. Herb Alpert even founded an entertainment empire on 'A Taste of Honey.' I remember I hated that record. It not only trivialized a beautiful and heartbreaking song, but I always presumed that the teenyboppers presumed Herb Alpert wrote it! Bobby Scott wrote it! And, at least, earned some serious royalties.
Bobby sang the song himself, as it oughta be, on a 1970 album for Warner Brothers called Robert William Scott...ln Memory of The Race. Bobby also sang on that album another hit he'd written, popularized by The Hollies, 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.' But the best song on that album was another heartbreaker, a song he'd written with Mort Goode, 'I Wish I Could Walk Away.' And even after 20 years out of print, I nonetheless answer requests to play that album on the radio. Most of what he's recorded as a singer -- a
and he's recorded plenty through the years for Atlantic and Mercury and Columbia-is out of print. That's why I was all the more ecstatic when -- at last! -- Bobby recorded again as a singer, this time for MusicMasters. For Sentimental Reasons was a musical highlight of 1989, and now comes Slowly, a new album equally delightful.
Only ... also comes the twist of fate. Bobby Scott died November 5, 1990, as this album was just in production. We'd talked and corresponded over the last several years and I knew he was battling cancer -- but also knew that Bobby was tough, that Bobby would rage against the dying of the light. It comes to us all in time-but an artist's life plays on, an artist's work plays on, and Bobby's music plays on.
One passage from Bobby's memoir What Is More Than All seems especially an epitaph: A daughter of mine once said to me/when referring to herself and her brothers, We're not your children, Daddy. Your compositions are, aren't they?' How perceptive of her, and how damn regrettable that fact to me. But my love for music is intertwined with my existence, and I can't remember a moment in my life, no matter how far back in time, when I didn't even sigh but that very act sought to approximate music! Music is the
way in which I speak when I seek to converse in the truest manner I can. I'm at a loss here using words to communicate to you just what music was and is to me, in the fullest sense. My daughter was right saying what she did, for the same tones in my youth were once my parents as well as my brother and sister, my very family, my friends, what I emanated from.”
Bobby Scott was a protean musician-singer, songwright, composer, arranger, producer, pianist. All of that and more. He was born in the Bronx in 1937 and at age 8 studied music with Edvard Moritz, a disciple of Debussy -- so it's no wonder that Bobby's music was so often so impressionistic. He played professionally first at age 11 and when only a teenager was already on the road with the likes of Louis Prima, Tony Scott, Gene Krupa and Jazz at the Philharmonic. Lester Young befriended the young Bobby "Sox' -- as Prez called the kid- and he often said that what he learned of music and life from Prez was a constant.
Early on, at age 18, he recorded his first hit, 'Chain Gang," but also composed a folk opera, a symphony for strings and a remarkable jazz suite, 'Four Solemn Thoughts,' the latter inspired by his elemental Christian faith. And meanwhile, he
backed Dick Haymes and arranged for Bobby Darin -- when he wasn't gigging as a singer and pianist himself.
Bobby's music for the Broadway production of the play A Taste of Honey, whence came the song, earned a Grammy in 1962. He also composed the music for the picture Slaves in 1969, worked A&R for Columbia and Mercury, produced folksinger Jesse Colin Young, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye ... and all that was some of the musical mosaic
Bobby's life became.
He'd worked in recent years, among other gigs, as a composer for guitarist Carlos Barbosa-Lima, arranger for Lou Rawls, pianist for Lionel Hampton – but especially as a singer.
Slowly offers more of that voice -- that seenthe-best, seen-the-worst, criedlaughed-andlived-it-all voice, that voice of twilight's ache and the last dream before morning, that voice of Bobby Scott.
Who else could sing Rod McKuen's ode to Nutra-sweetheart 'Jean' so heartfully? Who else could sing 'The Rainbow Connection' even more hopefully hipper than Kermit the Frog? Who else could sing that sad song of love, 'Hi Lily Hi Lo,' so upbeat and so certain there's more love to come? Who else could sing 'Music, Maestro, Please' so downbeat --
sing 'Music, Maestro, Please' so downbeat- and swing anyway
Only this maestro, Bobby Scott ...
-Michael Bourne Host of "Singers Unlimited" (WBGO in Newark) and "The American Jazz Radio Festival" (National Public Radio)
Recorded May 24, 25 & 29, 1990, BMG Studios, New York City
Engineered by Joe Lopes and Jay Newland, assisted by Vince Caro
Cover Photo Courtesy Judy Scott
Cover Design: John Berg
