Black Ephemera: Mark Anthony Neal on Jimmy Scott's Performance of "Day By Day"

"As a song that was part of Sinatra’s early repertoire, much of the genius of Jimmy Scott’s rendition of “Day by Day” comes in the pacing. As David Ritz describes it, Scott “takes it a tempo half the pace of Sinatra, elongating notes and rewriting melodies in a manner that seems to defy musical reason.” Viewed from a contemporary standpoint in which US Representative Maxine Waters’ famous claim that she was “reclaiming her time” became a popular digital meme, Scott indeed reclaims his time in his rendition of the song; his pacing almost seems to recover—in one song, no less—all the time that had already been lost in his career. Scott’s performance steals time, the song’s title a reminder of the “one day at a time” ethos that shaped Black political agency right into the era in which Scott recorded the song." 

–from Black Ephemera: The Crisisand Challenge of the Musical Archive (NYU Press, 2022)