Tuesday, June 28, 2022

JIMMY VELVIT and JIMMY VELVET

There are two separate rock and roll singers from the 1960s with the name Jimmy Velvet (Velvit) There has been confusion among record collectors for decades.

In Jeff Kreiter's vocal group guide there is a recording with the name of...

JIMMY VELVET.

-Wisdom of a Fool / I Want to Be Loved. Startime records-1961.

As you can see on the 45 rpm the correct name of this recording is by JIMMY VELVIT.



 I have uploaded two photos of a singer named Jimmy Velvet on ABC records, but the truth is I do not know if it is the same one that recorded for Startime records or is the other singer with the same name, if anyone knows, please indicate it in the comments of this publication.

2 comments:

Fred Clemens said...

It was almost 10 years ago that I took on the challenge of separating the 2 Jimmys You will find them separated correctly over on 45cat. Discogs still has them both mixed up. To further complicate things, it was learned soon after that there were two different Jimmie Tennant's.

Fred Clemens said...

Know that both photos are that of the same Jimmy Velvet. The STARTIME record is by a singer whose real name is James Mullins, whereas most of the time he recorded as Jimmy VELVIT. But he sometimes could also be found as Jimmy Velvet and James Bell.

As far as the photos of Jimmy Velvet, his real name was Jimmie Tennant, where he even recorded under that name early on. He only used the Jimmy VELVIT (spelling) name once, on his recordings of "We Belong Together" backed with "I'm Gonna Try To Forget The One I Love", but ONLY on the VELVIT or VELVET or WITCH labels. Mullins Velvit release happened on CUB records a year before Tennant. The ABC-PARAMOUNT release was by Tennant, where the flip side was "History Of Love". What made it so confusing was that Mullins wrote "I'm Gonna Try...". I had to listen to each record to make sure, as their voices are distinctly different. I also got some confirmation from Jimmy (Tennant) himself about which labels he would be found.