Jack Scott, briefly a rockabilly and pop hitmaker, dies at 83
By
Terence McArdle
Jan. 23, 2020 at 1:46 p.m. EST
Jack Scott, a rockabilly singer and reluctant star whose mellow balladry competed with Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison in the pop charts, died Dec. 12 in a hospital in Warren, Mich. He was 83.
His niece Rio Scafone said he died after a heart attack.
As a vocalist, Mr. Scott straddled a narrow fence between rock-and-roll and pop, placing 19 songs in the Billboard charts between 1958 and 1961. Of the nine that made the Top 40, eight came from his own pen.
His early hits included “My True Love” and “Leroy,” a jaunty ode to juvenile delinquency that the record company changed from its original title, “Greaseball.” His up-tempo yet doleful “Goodbye Baby,” written to a girlfriend after he was drafted into the Army in 1959, was later featured in the 1982 film “Diner.” Each featured The Chantones, a group modeled on Presley’s backup singers, The Jordanaires.
Mr. Scott found his greatest success as a balladeer, bringing his sonorous baritone to bear on slow, regret-filled songs such as “What in the World’s Come Over You” (later covered by Tom Jones), “It Only Happened Yesterday” and “Burning Bridges” (written by Walter Scott.)
Though he considered himself a rock-and-roll singer, Mr. Scott idolized country star Hank Williams and once devoted an entire album to Williams’s songs. Drawing on Williams’s pained expressiveness, he smoothed out the country singer’s twangy phrasing and added a hint of Presley’s attitude.
“It was really important to him not to be an imitation of anyone else,” said Scafone. “It was an era when record companies modeled people after other performers. But he always wanted to be authentic to the audience. He wanted to be his own guy.”
In later decades, Mr. Scott’s swaggering “The Way I Walk,” with its power chords and nonsensical scat refrain, became a rockabilly anthem through cover versions by Robert Gordon and the punk band The Cramps.
“Jack Scott sounded tough, like someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley unless he had a guitar in his hands,” critic Bill Dahl wrote on the website All Music Guide. “When he growled ‘The Way I Walk,’ wise men stepped aside.”
Mr. Scott was often photographed astride his Harley-Davidson, and music publications recounted his obsessive weightlifting. Beneath the tough image was a soft-spoken family man who hated the grind of road work. “He loved being on stage, but he preferred to be at home,” his niece said.
He performed several times on “American Bandstand” and toured as part of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. However, when he abruptly left the revue, Clark canceled further bookings.
Mr. Scott headlined a rockabilly revival tour of England in 1977 and, in later decades, maintained a following among the genre’s afficionados. In 2011, he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Giovanni Domenico Scafone Jr., known as Jack from childhood, was born in Windsor on Jan. 24, 1936. His father, an Italian immigrant who worked as a laborer and car painter, bought him a guitar at 9.
A year later, the family later moved to Hazel Park, a Detroit suburb. He was given the stage name Scott by a local disc jockey who heard him perform at a high school talent show.
Mr. Scott started a country band, the Southern Drifters. Then Presley burst on the national music scene.
“I was doing nothing but country songs until I heard Presley’s first records,” Mr. Scott told writer Paul Rigby. “Today, it seems that you play either rock or country but back then we were doing ‘Rock Around the Clock,’ ‘Be Bop A Lula’ and so on at square dances. It all blended. The audience loved one as much as the other. I never heard the term rockabilly until I went to Europe.”
In 1957, he recorded “Baby, She’s Gone,” a Presley-influenced rocker for the major label ABC. The song reached No. 1 in Detroit, but it failed to have impact nationally. The winning formula arrived after an independent label, Carlton, purchased his contract.
Survivors include his wife, the former Barbara Ann LaChapelle, and their two daughters; a daughter from a previous relationship; and a grandson.
Mr. Scott’s record sales declined by the mid-1960s. He signed with Nashville producer Chet Atkins but, with the British invasion in full swing, disc jockeys considered Mr. Scott’s musical style passe. Lacking further hits, he chose to stay in Detroit.
In fact, he had always been hesitant to travel.
“I was on tour going through Canada, and we came to the bridge there in Windsor, Ontario, to go in the States, and I said to myself, ‘This is awful close to home,’ ” he told writer Rob Finnis for liner notes to a 1990 reissue CD. “So, I got off the bus, and I took my guitar and left the tour.”
He added, “After a while, I got more into the swing of things and built up my resistance so I’d last longer, but no matter where I’d go, Florida or whatever, with its beautiful sunshine, I’d come back flying into Michigan on a lousy day, zero visibility down to the ground, to me it was beautiful — I was home!”
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