Jimmy Little

Played @ The Cornish Arms March, May & October 2001

Messenger

Jimmy Little is an Australian music legend who is yet to receive his full and proper due. Although he was Aboriginal of the Year in 1989, even though he was inducted int Tamworth's Country Music Roll of Renown in 1994, there are still some people who haven't been touched by this extraordinary man with this extraordinary voice.

Heralding his return to Festival Records after he first signed to the label in 1959, Jimmy Little comes back with his 27th album, Messenger, which will surely, finally, cement his legend.

Jimmy Little has an almost regal presence, which is combined with a modesty that underplays his status. As the first, and for many years, only Aboriginal star on the Australian music scene, Jimmy Little is a seminal figure.

Now 61, Jimmy is an old-fashioned artist – he is an interpreter rather than a writer of songs. Has anyone ever complained of Sinatra or Elvis? They never wrote their own material either. Jimmy Little is blessed with a preternaturally beautiful voice, which coupled with his bold less-is-more approach, reinvigorates and freshens every song he sings.

In 1965, Festival Records released an album called New Songs from Jimmy, a collection of Australian originals by emerging writers including Barry Gibb, Gary Shearston and Lorna Barry. Now, Messenger updates the same classic concept, bringing together and transforming songs by names like Finn, Keupper, Kelly, Cave and Kilbey, and in the process finding a new life for himself.

James Oswald Little – Gentleman Jim to the '60s music sscene – was born on the Cummeragunja Mission on the Murray River in 1937. His fater, Jimmy Little Snr., was himself an Aboriginal legend, a slong and dance man who led his own touring Vaudeville troupe in the '30s and '40s.
Jimmy simply followed in his father's footsteps, as is the tribal way, but adapted to a more modern world. After starting out as a teenage hillbilly singer in the early '50s, Jimmy hit the top in 1963 with the implacable country-gospel of Royal Telephone, which put him up with O'Keefe and Col Joye, a pioneer and a club and television staple. If at first his appeal, as a black kid, was a novelty to white Australia, the simplicity, sincerity and understated elegance of his artistry has seen him through to this day.

Jimmy arrived in Sydney in 1955 as a teenager and promptly caused a sensation when he appeared on the country music showboat, the Kalang. Signing to EMI, he cut his first Regal Zonophone 78, Mysteries of Life, in 1956 and went on to cut seven more before leaving the label.
In 1959, after making his acting debut in the Billy Graham evangelical feature film, Shadow of the Boomerang, Jimmy joined Festival Records. With Royal Telephone going Top 5, Jimmy was named by Everybody's magazine as Australia's Pop Star of the Year in 1964. During the '60s, the original, white Jimmy Little Trio gave way to an all black band (another first that Jimmy doesn't loudly proclaim). Even after establishing a more sophisticated image, Jimmy never forgot his roots, and it was with a gentle country-rock sound that he continued to fill the clubs until well into the '80s. But after his last recording for Festival in nearly a quarter of a century, a reggae single, Beautiful Woman produced by Ricky Fataar in 1983, Jimmy withdrew from performing to put more time into his family and community.

By 1988, at the age of 51, he had qualified as a teacher. In 1989 he made his triumphant theatre debut in Black Cockatoos, which was followed by his winning of the NAIDOC Aboriginal of the Year Award. He subsequently starred in Tracy Moffatt's short film, Night Cries, the opera Black River (in a non-singing role) and in Wim Wenders' feature film, Until the End of the World.

For Jimmy Little, however, acting in front of cameras can't compare to singing for a live audience, and so it wasn't long before he was back on stage. After spending '92 and '93 as part of the Tamworth on Parade and Kings of Country roadshows, Jimmy released the album Yorta Yorta Man independently in 1995 which pre-empted his return to Festival Records.

It was in 1996 that Sydney music stalwart and leader of hot-cool band Karma County, Brendan Gallagher, stumbled across a set by Jimmy and was, as he put it, "completely overawed". Gallagher determined to meet Jimmy and try recording something special with him – the result of that determination is this album.

Jimmy's wife of 40 years, Marj, calls it 'way out', but it is not such a radical departure for a man who has already reinvented himself several times over. With Gallagher producing at his home-studio and directing a stellar cast of guest musicians (Paul Hester, ex Crowded House & The Largest Living Things; Bow Campbell; Front End Loader; Tiddas; Andy Kell & Jeff Crawley; The Whitlams; Michael Galeazzi; Karma County; Lara Goodridge & Peter Hollo; Fourplay – just to name a few of the gusests to play on this amazing album), Jimmy is perhaps doing nothing he hasn't always done, simply selecting a varied range of contemporary songs and putting his own inimitable stamp on them.

If Lounge Music – sub-stratem: saloon singing – is to have any relevance in 1999, is this what is sounds like? Messenger's sound, even when near accapella, as it is often, testament to Jimmy's abilities – is at once epic yet almost agonisingly intimate, completely devoid of bombast. The sparest, most tense and breathy silence Jimmy Little can finess into a song is one of the most powerful devices in music. Just listen to Quasimodo's Dream and see if you don't hang on the moment, see if you don't think that particular classic, for one, has finally been fully realised.

If you ever felt you had a personal investment in other songs like Cattle & Cane by The GoBetweens or Alone With You by the Sunnyboys, the success of Messenger is that you will not feel betrayed or let down, but rather will thrill with the joy of rediscovery. Messenger will stop you in your tracks and might even change the course of Australian music, if only in the ever-so-gentle way that is uniquely Jimmy Little's.

Bookings & enquiries:
Buzz Bidstrup at Allied Artist: 02 9712 3300 / fax: 02 9712 3884
www.jimmylittle.com