Jimi Jamison’s trademark husky vocals graced hit records, film soundtracks and the popular TV series Baywatch. He co-wrote I’m Always Here, the show’s theme tune, and if the soundtrack was less memorable than the sight of Pamela Anderson and other bikini-clad actresses cavorting on the beaches of California, Jamison’s song survived to grace several seasons of the US drama, which ran throughout the 1990s.
As the lead singer with the Chicago-based pop-rock band Survivor — which had earlier had a famous No 1 with Eye of the Tiger — he enjoyed big hits in the 1980s with Is This Love, High on You and The Search is Over. He also sang Burning Heart in the film Rocky IV starring Sylvester Stallone, who sent Jamison the script for inspiration in writing the song.
To his chagrin his management forced him to pass on an invitation in 1989 to replace Ian Gillan as lead singer with the British heavy-rock band Deep Purple. “It was an honour to be asked,” he said. “But I had just finished my first solo record and they wanted me to go out and promote it.”
Jamison was a good ol’ southern boy whose slow, Tennessee drawl betrayed his roots. He was born Jimmy Wayne Jamison in Mississippi in 1951 but his mother took him to Memphis the next day and he lived there for most of his life. An early memory was running into Memphis’s most famous son, Elvis Presley. “It was at a place called Katz Drug Store,” he said. “He was on his motorcycle with a chick on the back, of course.”
He learnt to play piano, guitar and trumpet — inspired by the horn he heard on soul records — and formed his first band the Brutes at school, so named because they were members of the American football team. He married Debbie, a professional singer, and they had two daughters, Amy, a singer-songwriter and Lacy, and a son Jamie, who plays in the band Versera.
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His commercial breakthrough came in 1984 when he was invited to join Survivor which had just lost lead singer Dave Bickler. Jamison proved a worthy replacement before departing for a solo career. At its height, Baywatch had a reported weekly audience of 1.1 billion in 148 countries. He noted: “I’m very proud of that song . . . We always get a huge reaction whenever we perform it live.”
Jimi Jamison, singer, was born on August 23, 1951. He died of a heart attack on August 31, 2014, aged 63