Jimmy Velvet

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

[edit] History

Jimmy was born in Memphis, Tennessee but grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, where he met Elvis Presley and they became lifelong close friends. After Elvis' death Velvet operated an Elvis memorabilia museum in Memphis for about twenty years.

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 began using Jimmy Velvet as the show name for his own recordings. Mullins continued recording separately using the Velvit spelling, and is still recording to this day. His recordings are also collectable, and similar to Tennant's. In fact they both separately made recordings of "We Belong Together" during that period. Of the two singers, only Tennant's "It's Almost Tomorrow" and "We Belong Together" 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.

Velvet was championed by TV host Dick Clark, who had him on his American Bandstand show more than once. Clark helped him release a 1968 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.

Jimmy 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.