Biography
Freddie Scott, the deep soul belter best known for topping the R&B charts in 1966 with “Are You Lonely for Me,” entered the world on April 24, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island. During his early teenage years he sang with his grandmother’s gospel ensemble, Sally Jones & the Gospel Keyes, yet soon shifted his focus toward medicine and pursued a Ph.D. at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. While there he joined the Swanee Quintet Juniors, the youth counterpart of the celebrated gospel group, and made his first appearance on record by delivering the lead vocal on their “Far Away Places.” He ultimately abandoned his medical studies to pursue performance full time, moving from sacred material into secular soul and signing in 1956 with Zell Sanders’ J&S label, which released his initial solo single, “Running Home.”
That release drew scant notice, although Johnnie & Joe soon scored a hit with Scott’s composition “I’ll Be Spinning.” Late in 1956, however, he was drafted and served briefly in Korea. Military obligations did not entirely halt his studio work; for the small Bow and Arrow imprint he recorded 1957’s “Tell Them for Me,” followed in 1958 by “Please Call” and “A Faded Memory.” Once discharged, he moved to the short-lived Enrica label and issued 1959’s “Come On, Honey.” When that single also failed to register, Scott concentrated on songwriting, collaborating with Helen Miller for Al Nevins and Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music concern inside the Brill Building.
He supplied vocals for many Aldon demos and briefly produced sessions for Erma Franklin, Aretha Franklin’s sister. In 1961 he resumed recording with “Baby, You’re a Long Time Dead” for Joy Records. The following year Aldon colleagues Gerry Goffin and Carole King enlisted him to demo “Hey Girl,” a song intended for Chuck Jackson. When Jackson missed the session, Scott recorded the vocal himself; Colpix issued the ballad a year later, sending it into the pop and R&B Top Ten. A measured reading of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” came next, confirming Scott’s stature as a deep soul stylist of rare intensity, even though later Colpix sides such as “Where Does Love Go” suffered from overly polished arrangements.
Falling sales and Colpix’s weakening structure prompted a move to parent company Columbia, which marketed him as “the Million Dollar Baby” and repositioned him as a crooner on 1964’s “One Heartache Too Many.” In 1965 he released the cabaret-styled album Everything I Have Is Yours, built largely around movie themes. The experiment flopped, so Scott reverted to a classic soul approach with the strong Lonely Man LP; commercial results remained negligible. After two final Columbia singles, among them the moving “Don’t Let It End This Way,” the label dropped him.
He resurfaced in 1966 on Shout Records, the new soul imprint launched by producer-songwriter Bert Berns. Together they wrote “Are You Lonely for Me,” a smoldering, blues-inflected track said to have required more than one hundred takes. The finished record held the R&B summit for four weeks and reached number 39 on the pop chart. Its 1967 successor, “Cry to Me,” underperformed commercially yet stands as Scott’s most emotionally charged performance. He returned to the R&B Top Ten with the funk-driven “Am I Grooving You?,” while “Just Like a Flower” missed the charts; 1968’s “(You) Got What I Need” nevertheless reached the R&B Top 40 and later received an idiosyncratic cover by Biz Markie two decades afterward.
Following Berns’s fatal heart attack on December 31, 1967, his widow Eileen could not sustain Shout, and after one last single, “No One Could Ever Love You,” Scott departed. He spent the next two years without a contract before joining the short-lived Elephant V label and releasing “Sugar on Sunday” in 1970. A follow-up, “I’ll Be Leaving Her Tomorrow,” preceded another relocation, this time to ABC’s Probe subsidiary for the album I Shall Be Released; its title track, a potent take on the Bob Dylan standard, became his final R&B Top 40 entry.
When Probe folded, Scott signed with Vanguard for the 1971 one-off “I Guess God Wants It That Way.” Pickwick International issued “The Great If” in 1972, and two years later Mainstream released the ballad “You Are So Hard to Forget,” his last single. By then he earned his living chiefly by writing advertising jingles with longtime partner Miller and had begun acting, appearing in Stiletto and No Way Out. He continued performing regularly into the 1980s, then largely withdrew from music during the following decade. A 1990s recording of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” for an Evangeline Records tribute project led him to producer Jon Tiven; the pair recorded a blues album that appeared in 2001 as Brand New Man, Scott’s first new material in nearly twenty-five years. He died on June 4, 2007.
That release drew scant notice, although Johnnie & Joe soon scored a hit with Scott’s composition “I’ll Be Spinning.” Late in 1956, however, he was drafted and served briefly in Korea. Military obligations did not entirely halt his studio work; for the small Bow and Arrow imprint he recorded 1957’s “Tell Them for Me,” followed in 1958 by “Please Call” and “A Faded Memory.” Once discharged, he moved to the short-lived Enrica label and issued 1959’s “Come On, Honey.” When that single also failed to register, Scott concentrated on songwriting, collaborating with Helen Miller for Al Nevins and Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music concern inside the Brill Building.
He supplied vocals for many Aldon demos and briefly produced sessions for Erma Franklin, Aretha Franklin’s sister. In 1961 he resumed recording with “Baby, You’re a Long Time Dead” for Joy Records. The following year Aldon colleagues Gerry Goffin and Carole King enlisted him to demo “Hey Girl,” a song intended for Chuck Jackson. When Jackson missed the session, Scott recorded the vocal himself; Colpix issued the ballad a year later, sending it into the pop and R&B Top Ten. A measured reading of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” came next, confirming Scott’s stature as a deep soul stylist of rare intensity, even though later Colpix sides such as “Where Does Love Go” suffered from overly polished arrangements.
Falling sales and Colpix’s weakening structure prompted a move to parent company Columbia, which marketed him as “the Million Dollar Baby” and repositioned him as a crooner on 1964’s “One Heartache Too Many.” In 1965 he released the cabaret-styled album Everything I Have Is Yours, built largely around movie themes. The experiment flopped, so Scott reverted to a classic soul approach with the strong Lonely Man LP; commercial results remained negligible. After two final Columbia singles, among them the moving “Don’t Let It End This Way,” the label dropped him.
He resurfaced in 1966 on Shout Records, the new soul imprint launched by producer-songwriter Bert Berns. Together they wrote “Are You Lonely for Me,” a smoldering, blues-inflected track said to have required more than one hundred takes. The finished record held the R&B summit for four weeks and reached number 39 on the pop chart. Its 1967 successor, “Cry to Me,” underperformed commercially yet stands as Scott’s most emotionally charged performance. He returned to the R&B Top Ten with the funk-driven “Am I Grooving You?,” while “Just Like a Flower” missed the charts; 1968’s “(You) Got What I Need” nevertheless reached the R&B Top 40 and later received an idiosyncratic cover by Biz Markie two decades afterward.
Following Berns’s fatal heart attack on December 31, 1967, his widow Eileen could not sustain Shout, and after one last single, “No One Could Ever Love You,” Scott departed. He spent the next two years without a contract before joining the short-lived Elephant V label and releasing “Sugar on Sunday” in 1970. A follow-up, “I’ll Be Leaving Her Tomorrow,” preceded another relocation, this time to ABC’s Probe subsidiary for the album I Shall Be Released; its title track, a potent take on the Bob Dylan standard, became his final R&B Top 40 entry.
When Probe folded, Scott signed with Vanguard for the 1971 one-off “I Guess God Wants It That Way.” Pickwick International issued “The Great If” in 1972, and two years later Mainstream released the ballad “You Are So Hard to Forget,” his last single. By then he earned his living chiefly by writing advertising jingles with longtime partner Miller and had begun acting, appearing in Stiletto and No Way Out. He continued performing regularly into the 1980s, then largely withdrew from music during the following decade. A 1990s recording of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” for an Evangeline Records tribute project led him to producer Jon Tiven; the pair recorded a blues album that appeared in 2001 as Brand New Man, Scott’s first new material in nearly twenty-five years. He died on June 4, 2007.
Albums
