Throughout his stellar but erratic career, Jimmy Scott often depended on strangers—influential figures like Ray Charles, Joel Dorn and Todd Barkan were compelled to try and secure for Scott the wider audience he so richly deserved. Last among such heroes was German producer Ralf Kemper, who spent years, and a small fortune, assembling what would prove Scott’s final album, I Go Back Home (which shares its title with a superb “making-of” documentary, presented last year at Austin’s SXSW festival).
Scott, who died in 2014, at age 88, rarely partnered with other artists, which makes this epitaph all the more special. Across multiple recording sessions, Kemper persuaded an array of guests—Dee Dee Bridgewater, Renee Olstead, Monica Mancini, Joey DeFrancesco, James Moody, Oscar Castro-Neves, Kenny Barron, Till Brönner, Grégoire Maret, Arturo Sandoval and actor/singer Joe Pesci, a longtime pal—to participate.
