Remembering Jack Scott through the late Bill Gay

FLASHBACK RADIO with Chuck Reynolds

As many of you probably read in the Southpoint Sun back on January 20, Bill Gay passed away the week before, and Scott Holland also mentioned in his story, many of the wonderful things that Bill was involved with over the years in both Leamington and Essex.

He was also a very good friend of mine, who I first met when I came to Leamington and CHYR radio in 1977.

Over the years, we were involved with several activities at the radio station, and did many live broadcasts at businesses and events in Windsor and Essex County.

As a sports fan, Bill took me to many Tigers and Blue Jays matchups at Tiger Stadium, along with also going to several Leamington Flyer and Windsor Spitfire games.

Today I’d like to pay tribute to something many people didn’t know about Bill Gay.

That was his incredible knowledge and love of pop and rock & roll music from the mid-to-latter 50s through the late 60s.

Along with introducing me to many of those artists of that era through his recollections, Bill also had a huge pile of Elvis Presley records which definitely topped his favourites list.

However, the one other artist he was really fascinated by was Jack Scott.

At that point, I had very little knowledge of Jack Scott. But that soon changed, because whenever I rode in Bill’s car over the past 15 years, that was the artist I heard most playing in his car.

You could sort of say, that Jack became a friend of mine. Jack’s birth name was Giovanni Domenico Scafone Jr. and he was born in Windsor on January 24, 1936 – just a year and 16 days after Elvis was delivered.

JACK SCOTT

While he was a Windsor boy, his family pulled up stakes and moved across the border to Hazel Park, Michigan, in 1946.

As a teenager, Giovanni and his sister Linda played at high school functions, and he was invited onto a radio show where the disc jockey suggested he change his name from Giovanni Scafone to the easy-to-say Jack Scott.

In the mid 50s, he started a hillbilly band called the Southern Drifters and they played country music until he heard Elvis Presley in 1956.

From then on, it was rockabilly and Jack signed a recording contract with ABC Paramount in 1957, soon releasing ‘Baby She’s Gone’ along with the flip side, ‘You Can Bet Your Bottom Dollar’.

They were regional hits in the Detroit area but his breakout didn’t happen until he joined up with his vocal quartet, the Chantones, also from Windsor. That collaboration added the perfect harmonies.

Together, with his baritone voice, they released a dual hit single, ‘My True Love’, on June 30, 1958, which made the Top 3 on the Billboard Top 100, while the flip side, ‘Leroy’, reached #11.

Over those first 41 months, Jack had an impressive record, with 19 of his songs reaching the Top 100, and three more of those landing in the Top 10, including ‘Goodbye Baby’ (#8), ‘What in the World’s Come Over You’ (#5), and ‘Burning Bridges’ (#3).

With the many thousands of groups and artists reaching the Billboard Top 100 in the 50s and 60s, only 19 others have matched or topped that plateau of 19 songs within their first 41 months.

The most notable members of this very exclusive club include The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Four Seasons, Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra, The Everly Brothers, Paul Anka and Connie Francis. And, unlike so many of his fellow artists, Jack wrote most of his hit songs.

Many of his fans probably wondered why he didn’t continue having success on a national level. Some say it had more to do with him moving about to different record labels.

His first nine charting songs were with Carlton but then he moved over to Top Rank in 1960, which gave him two of his highest ranked back-to-back releases.

However, the next year, he hopped over to Capitol where none of his last three releases manage to break the top 80. And after that, none of his songs charted at all, despite moving to four other record labels.

Over the years, Scott traveled and played all over North America and Europe but, sadly, it wasn’t until 2011 that he was finally recognized by his peers in Canada when he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Warren Cosford, a retired radio executive who had worked at CHUM Radio and CKLW — two of the biggest Top 40 radio stations in North America — once commented that, “Jack was Canada’s first rock and roll star, a truly great singer and songwriter who inspired many kids in Canada like me to start bands”.

Jack Scott played less in recent years and 14 months ago, five days after suffering a massive heart attack, he passed away on December 12, 2019.