Still best known for his eerie appearance in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, Jimmy Scott, now 78, is an entirely singular singer, whose influence extends beyond his own world of jazz to soul (Marvin Gaye was among his many fans) and, by extension, to pop itself. Remarkably, he has outlived many of those he has inspired and, in the 1990s, after years of personal turmoil and virtual professional anonymity, he experienced a well-deserved renaissance. He is, perhaps unfairly, taken a little for granted, though he still tours regularly, and tonight is to prove a shocking reminder of how precious these appearances are.
Even more remarkably, he's now singing better than he was a few years ago. His voice, though changed for ever from the extraordinary, soaring instrument of his 1960s peak, has regained the supple lilt and effortless precision, and all the subtle shifts and delicate grace notes have returned. It is a voice that defies gender, resonant with an omniscient androgyny.
Scott can locate the integral pathos in a superficially upbeat standard like All of Me and sings with immaculately judged swing. When he sings "You took the part that once was my heart", you feel the physical pain of the excision. He can make the most daring phrasing seem as natural as breathing. Even a lightweight number like Pennies from Heaven is suffused with a hard-won jubilation, a sense that all the vicissitudes of life are poured into each lustrous note. He is as much a torch singer as a jazz singer, channelling extreme emotion in a way that is brutally cathartic.
At the end of a harrowing Motherless Child, a song for ever associated with Scott (not least because his own mother was killed in a road accident when he was a boy), he omits the final line of the reprised first verse, apparently deliberately, and it is unbearably poignant. But then he falls backwards, unconscious and has to be revived backstage.
Scott has seen a doctor and is continuing his tour. A true original on peerless form, surely this is the last time Scott will be taken for granted.
· Until January 24. Box office: 020-7439 0747.
