k m Scott

A smart combination of two 1961 albums, Hip Soul and Hip Twist, both of which featured Stanley Turrentine on sax. Hip Soul is the smokier and livelier of the pair, especially on "Stanley's Time" and the Turrentine-composed title track; the material is delivered with a taut intelligence. Hip Twist doesn't suffer much in comparison, though, and gives Scott a bit more presence, as she introduces several themes with impassioned swirls; unlike Hip Soul, it has a couple of tunes from her own pen.

One of the most enigmatic figures in rock history, Scott Walker was known as Scotty Engel when he cut obscure flop records in the late '50s and early '60s in the teen idol vein. He then hooked up with John Maus and Gary Leeds to form the Walker Brothers. They weren't named Walker, they weren't brothers, and they weren't English, but they nevertheless became a part of the British Invasion after moving to the U.K. in 1965. They enjoyed a couple of years of massive success there (and a couple of hits in the U.S.) in a Righteous Brothers vein. As their full-throated lead singer and principal songwriter, Walker was the dominant artistic force in the group, who split in 1967. While remaining virtually unknown in his homeland, Walker launched a hugely successful solo career in Britain with a unique blend of orchestrated, almost MOR arrangements with idiosyncratic and morose lyrics. At the height of psychedelia, Walker openly looked to crooners like Sinatra, Jack Jones, and Tony Bennett for inspiration, and to Jacques Brel for much of his material. None of those balladeers, however, would have sung about the oddball subjects – prostitutes, transvestites, suicidal brooders, plagues, and Joseph Stalin – that populated Walker's songs.