JIMMY SCOTT

Falling In Love Is Wonderful

This title is no longer available from Rhino Handmade.

However, numbered copies from the original edition may be available at select retailers.

An individually numbered, limited edition of 7,500 copies from Rhino Handmade.

In case any of us have forgotten, Jimmy Scott's vocal jazz masterpiece is back after a 40-year disappearing act to remind us that yes, Falling In Love Is Wonderful. A long-lost classic, this unabashedly romantic long-player was conceived by a Jimmy Scott fan known as Ray Charles.  

The year was 1962. Ray Charles was America's favorite singer. He'd recently released such career-defining albums as Genius Hits The Road, Genius + Soul = Jazz, and Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music. He'd even started his own record label.  With the world at his fingertips, what Brother Ray really wanted to do was produce and play on an album of ballads by one of his favorite singers, Jimmy Scott.  

Meanwhile, Jimmy Scott was free as a bird -- or so he thought. Having sung with Lionel Hampton and Charlie Parker in the '50s, he was already a profound influence on artists like Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson (you see, Jimmy had Kallman's Syndrome, which meant that he looked like a somewhat androgynous teenager and sang in a mostly female range).  

So Ray signed Jimmy to his new Tangerine label and assembled a project in the vein of Sinatra's sublime '50s work with Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. In fact, four of the songs on Falling In Love Is Wonderful were closely identified with The Chairman: "Why Try To Change Me Now," "Someone To Watch Over Me," "How Deep Is The Ocean," and "Sunday, Monday, And Always." Gerald Wilson and Marty Paich arranged the tunes, Joe Adams produced, and Ray Charles "supervised." As Wilson tells it in the liner notes to this reissue, "Ray supervised, but he did so from the piano. He played on every track. And he made sure we wrote charts that gave his piano space. If you listen to the record carefully, it's really a long and intimate conversation between Ray's sensitive piano and Jimmy's sensitive voice."  

Unfortunately, Falling In Love Is Wonderful disappeared virtually as soon as it was released. A contract dispute arose with Jimmy's previous label, and Tangerine pulled the new record from stores. The collectors' market has valued existing copies in the hundreds of dollars, meaning that most fans have never been able to own this jewel of Jimmy's catalog. I guess we'll all just have to fall in love for the first time.  

Falling In Love Is Wonderful is available as an individually numbered limited edition of 7,500 copies. Because this title is expected to be released internationally as an unlimited edition, this Rhino Handmade edition is available only in the U.S. and Canada. 

Selection # 7814