Jimmy Velvet

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Jimmy Tennant, better known as Jimmy Velvet, was an early American soft rock and roll vocalist, during the 1960s. His most popular singles were "We Belong Together" and "It's Almost Tomorrow".

Soft rock is a derivative form of pop rock that originated in the late 1960s in southern California and in the United Kingdom. The style smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. Soft rock was prevalent on the radio throughout the 1970s and eventually metamorphosed into the synthesized music of adult contemporary in the 1980s.

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s from musical styles such as gospel, jump blues, jazz, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues, along with country music. While elements of what was to become rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until 1954.

Singing act of producing musical sounds with the voice

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, gazal and popular music styles such as pop, rock, electronic dance music and filmi.

Contents

History

Tennant was born in Jacksonville, Florida, where he became involved in music entertainment. It was there he met Elvis Presley and they became lifelong close friends. After Elvis' death, Tennant operated an Elvis memorabilia museum in Memphis for about twenty years.

Jacksonville, Florida Largest city in Florida

Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida, the most populous city in the southeastern United States and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968. Consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits. As of 2017 Jacksonville's population was estimated to be 892,062. The Jacksonville metropolitan area has a population of 1,523,615 and is the fourth largest in Florida.

Elvis Presley American singer and actor

Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".

In the early 1960s, he worked as the manager for a singer from Texas named James Mullins, who used the name Jimmy Velvit. The two soon split due to disagreements. Tennant, who had recorded under his own name in the late 1950s, began using Jimmy Velvet as his show name by early 1963. Mullins continued recording separately using the Velvit spelling, and is still recording to this day. In fact, they both separately made recordings of "We Belong Together" during that period. When Tennant first recorded and released "We Belong Together in April, 1963, his intent was to be billed as Jimmy Velvet. But when the initial records were made, a copy of the earlier Mullins release on Cub was used as an informational reference, and his name was given as "Velvit". The label was also named as such, as the intent was to sell the record with the name association for the label. Only 1,000 copies were made, and most were destroyed. In July, more copies were made with the label name changed to the intended VELVET spelling, but Jimmy's name still showed as Velvit. Of the two singers, only Tennant's "We Belong Together" and "It's Almost Tomorrow" reached the Top 100 charts. A later album titled Reflections of...Jimmy Velvet's Greatest Hits did contain both those charted songs, and may still be found today.

James Mullins, better known as Jimmy Velvit, is an American rock and roll singer, who began his career in the 1960s. He is originally from Coalgate, Oklahoma, later from Dallas, Texas. He is best known for recording a white rhythm and blues version, in 1962, of Robert & Johnny's 1958 hit "We Belong Together". Velvit's first release was "Sometimes at Night" on Division Records in 1961, afterwards released on Cub Records. He also recorded under the name 'James Bell', in 1968, when he charted "He Ain't Country", a Country & Western release, for Bell Records.

Velvet toured in 1973-1978 with the Jimmy Velvet Show band. Band members included Steve Morgan (guitar), John Collins (bassist), Dennis Moog (drums), and Kathy Slinkard Velvet (stage name Kathy Scott, married to Jimmy from 1970-1997)(keyboards)

Velvet was championed by TV host Dick Clark, who had him on his American Bandstand show more than once. Clark helped him release a 1967 album A Touch of Velvet. The LP contained some of Jimmy's single releases including the title song and "It's Almost Tomorrow", but not "We Belong Together". Jimmy used various labels for his releases, including his own label named Velvet Tone.

Dick Clark American radio and television personality

Richard Wagstaff Clark was an American radio and television personality, television producer and film actor, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1957 to 1988. He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which transmitted Times Square's New Year's Eve celebrations. Clark was well known for his trademark sign-off, "For now, Dick Clark — so long!", accompanied by a facsimile of a military salute.

<i>American Bandstand</i> American music-performance show

American Bandstand is an American music-performance and dance television program that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989, and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as the program's producer. It featured teenagers dancing to Top 40 music introduced by Clark; at least one popular musical act—over the decades, running the gamut from Jerry Lee Lewis to Run–D.M.C.—would usually appear in person to lip-sync one of their latest singles. Freddy Cannon holds the record for most appearances, at 110.

Velvet is still involved with the music field, and has published an autobiography titled Inside the Dream (2007), which includes a wealth of celebrity photographs from the early days of rock and roll.

Autobiography account of the life of a person, written by that person

An autobiography is a self-written account of the life of oneself. The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical The Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of his or her life.

Discography

As by Jimmie Tennant

"The Witness"/ "Giggle Wiggle" (Thunder 1000) early 1958

"Salute"/ "The Big Retreat" (Warwick 533) April, 1960

(Note that a record by Jimmie Tennant, "You're The Beat Within My Heart"/ "Heartbreak Avenue" (Amp 790) released in January, 1959, is by a different Jimmie Tennant, born James D. Tennant in 1935 in Indiana)


As by Kitt 'N' Kory (Jimmie was Kory, Kitt was a girl named Judy)

"First Star"/ "Across The Moon" (Warwick 523) February, 1960


As by Jimmy Velvit

"You're Mine And We Belong Together"/ "I'm Gonna Try To Forget The One I Love" (Velvit 201-63) April, 1963

"You're Mine And We Belong Together"/ "I'm Gonna Try To Forget the One I Love" (Velvet 201-63) July, 1963

"You're Mine And We Belong Together"/ "I'm Gonna Try To Forget The One I Love" (Witch 115) August, 1963

(Note that a record released with the same two songs as by Jimmy Velvit on Cub Records K9105 in January, 1962, is one by Jimmy Mullins, not Tennant. Tennant had intended to be billed as Jimmy Velvet, but the Cub release was used as a reference and the error was made. Mullins wrote "I'm Gonna Try...".)


As by Jimmy Velvet

"We Belong Together"/ "The History Of Love" (ABC-Paramount 10488) November, 1963

"To The Aisle"/ "Lonely, Lonely Night" (ABC-Paramount 10528) April, 1964

"Teen Angel"/ "Mission Bell" (Velvet Tone 101) November, 1964

"Mission Bell" is a song written by William Michael and Jesse Hodges and performed by Donnie Brooks. It reached #7 on the U.S. pop chart in 1960. It was featured on his 1961 album The Happiest.

"Teen Angel"/ "Mission Bell" (Tollie 9037) December, 1964

"Young Hearts"/ "It's Almost Tomorrow" (Velvet Tone 102) 1964

"It's Almost Tomorrow"/ "Blue Eyes (Don't Run Away)" (Velvet Tone 103) 1965

"It's Almost Tomorrow"/ "Blue Eyes (Don't Run Away)" (Philips 40285) April, 1965

"Young Hearts"/ "I Won't Be Back This Year" (Philips 40314) August, 1965

"Take Me Tonight"/ "Young Hearts" (Velvet Tone 106) February, 1967

"Take Me Tonight"/ "Young Hearts" (Cameo 464) 1967

"Roses Are Blue"/ "A Touch Of Velvet" (Cameo 488) 1967

EP - GOLDEN HITS ("We Belong Together", "Teen Angel"/ "It's Almost Tomorrow", "Mission Bell") (Velvet Tone VTR-201) 1967

"Sigma Alpha Lonely"/ "Candy Heart" (Velvet Tone 112) December, 1967

LP - A TOUCH OF VELVET (Velvet Tone VTR-S-501) December, 1967

LP - A TOUCH OF VELVET (United Artists UAS 6653) 1968

"Sigma Alpha Lonely"/ "Candy Heart" (United Artists 50279) March, 1968

"It's You"/ "A Woman" (Royal American 286) June, 1968

"Missing You"/ "Blue Velvet" (Royal American 291) 1969

"(Things That Make A Woman) A Woman"/ "Wasted Years" (VTR 1503) 1970

"(Things That Make A Woman) A Woman"/ "Wasted Years" (VTR-Sundi V/SR-7101) March, 1971

LP - A TOUCH OF VELVET (Music City VTR-501) 1973 (re-issue of 1967 Velvet Tone LP)

LP - BLUE VELVET (Music City MCR-502) 1973 (with the Kathy Scott Singers)

"It's You"/ "Wasted Years" (Music City MCR 888) 1973 (with the Kathy Scott Singers)

(Note that records as by Jimmy Velvet on the BLUE, BELL, BI, and TEAR DROP labels are not by Tennant. They are actually by Jimmy Mullins, otherwise known as Jimmy Velvit or James Bell.)


As by Kathy And Jimmy (Kathy is Kathy Scott)

"I Still Believe In Tomorrow"/ "Love's Gonna Rise Up Again" (VTR 1501) 1970

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