Marilyn Scott

Marilyn Scott's new release, Get Christmas Started, is the first-ever actual holiday party album, and one with an all-star backing cast to boot. Like any great hostess, Ms. Scott has prepped meticulously for the celebration. Marilyn consciously began adding a new holiday tune into her Christmas season sets each year, the best of which form the heart and soul of Get Christmas Started. Drawing on sources far and wide, including Broadway legend Frank Loesser, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Leon Russell, and Motown hit-maker Anna Gordy Gaye, Scott takes time-tested holiday standards and does what she does best: reinvents them in her own instantly-recognizable style. The album's lead single is "Christmas Time Is Here".

"I have always loved the old R&B and spiritual renditions of Christmas music," says Scott, and the truth of that statement is evident from the Philly Soul vibe she establishes right from the album's opening track, "This Christmas." She digs into a bluesy groove in "Christmas in Chicago," with just a dollop of New Orleans funk at its core. And by the time she segues into "That's What Christmas Means to Me," it's evident that Ms. Scott studied at the school of Hitsville, U.S.A., with a bouncy backbeat that does Motown's Funk Brothers' sound proud.

At the tender age of 17, the Southern California native trekked north for the legendary Monterey Pop Festival, where she was exposed to the likes of Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, and Lou Rawls; at that point, the die was cast. Upon her post-collegiate return to LA, Marilyn found herself an in-demand vocalist, doing sessions and performing with the Yellowjackets, Hiroshima, Bobby Womack, George Duke and Etta James, among others.

Since then, Scott's career has ranged all over the musical map, boasting entries on the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, R&B Singles, Contemporary Jazz, and Jazz Album charts. Her cover of Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" garnered a Grammy nomination for producer George Duke on its way to the top of the charts. And from an interpretation of "Skylark" in Torch Song Trilogy that was lauded by critic Christopher Loudon as "the most perfectly executed 'Skylark' I'd ever heard" to her magnificent re-imagining of "I Only Have Eyes For You" in Twins, Scott's soundtrack career has brought her both critical and commercial acclaim as a world-class interpreter of music.

As if all that weren't enough, she is currently in the studio, working hard on a present for her fans: a new album, slated for release in 2015.

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