Jack Scott – Nostalgia Central

When Jack Scott first appeared on the rock’n’roll scene in the late fifties, he immediately demonstrated a highly individual and powerful style – like Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis or any other well-known pioneer, there could be no mistaking a Jack Scott record.

Considering the quality of his best work and the impact of his music, it may seem surprising that his songs have not been revived more often and that he remains comparatively little-known.

His songs have seldom been revived, in part, because of ongoing confusion over his catalogue, which has meant Scott tracks rarely appeared on rock’n’roll compilation albums.

Add to this the fact that he never had much enthusiasm for touring, and it becomes easier to see why an artist whom many regard as among the very best should be something of a well-kept secret.

His ballads marked Jack Scott’s unique contribution to rock’n’roll. They were the slowest, heaviest, gutsiest ballads ever recorded.

They were also beautifully simple. A male backing chorus reinforced his reverberating voice as he plodded through the most basic chord progressions, sometimes repeating the same four-chord sequence over and over.

On his records, the acoustic guitar had a presence that made it sound as though your ear was pressed close to the instrument’s body.

The rockers displayed another characteristic element of Scott’s style — his tongue-in-cheek humour. On the song Geraldine (1958), he conveyed his lustful designs by repeating the girl’s name 94 times, and the backing vocalists chipped in with a few more while he paused for breath.

There wasn’t much time left on the record for a more detailed analysis of his feelings, but he’d made his point.

He used the same technique to amusing effect on Found A Woman (1960), repeating the title as sufficient to convey the idea he wanted, and rounding off each verse with a line like “Well, I told ma, ma told pa, pa said mm-mm.”

Born Giovanni Domenico Scafone, Jr. on 24 January 1938 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Scott moved to Detroit with his family as a teen.

He began writing songs and landed a contract with a music publisher at 19. This led him to sign with ABC Records as a performer, but although he cut a few singles, none made much of an impression.

At ABC, Scott met producer Joe Carlton, who left the company in 1958 and set up his own label, Carlton. Scott went with him.

Two of his songs – Leroy and My True Love – were released back-to-back on Carlton, and the record became a double-sided smash, selling more than a million copies. My True Love hit #3 in Billboard‘s Hot Hundred and made the Top Ten in Britain.

With Your Love made #28 in the US later that year; Goodbye Baby peaked at #8 early in 1959; and The Way I Walk became a Top Forty hit that Robert Gordon revived in 1978.

Scott transferred to the new Top Rank label in 1959 and scored another huge success in the New Year with What In The World’s Come Over You. The song gave Scott his second gold disc, reaching #5 in the USA and #6 in the UK.

Further successes followed – Burning Bridges (#3) and Cool Water/It Only Happened Yesterday – but Scott was by then being steered towards a mainstream country style.

On a visit to Britain in 1977, he explained the circumstances surrounding his switch from Carlton to Top Rank. He admitted that he had been somewhat naive in those days.

“I was with Carlton. They had the right to record me. Another company, Starfire, had my management and publishing. I wasn’t really sure what was best for me, so I just went along with what they said. Starfire got into hassles with Carlton because Joe Carlton wanted publishing as well as recording rights on a particular song. Next thing I knew, they’d pulled me off Carlton and onto Top Rank. I didn’t know there was this feuding going on. Joe Carlton kept all the Carlton material, and I didn’t get paid. Then I heard that Carlton had gone bankrupt, sold up, disappeared.”

In 1961 Scott moved to Capitol where he cut three Hot Hundred hits during the year before disappearing from the charts altogether.

In the mid-seventies Scott reissued some of his old records on a label called Ponie. Because the two companies that issued his best records had long since ceased business, he couldn’t trace all the original master tapes and had to dub some songs from old records.

He kept on playing and singing – mostly on club dates around his home in Michigan – until he suffered a heart attack on 6 December 2019. He died six days later at St. John Macomb Hospital in Warren, Michigan, aged 83.