Jack Scott (born Giovanni Domenico Scafone, Jr.; January 24, 1936 – December 12, 2019) was a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. He was best known for his string of rockabilly hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Scott was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, to Italian-American parents. When he was 10, his family moved to Hazel Park, a Detroit suburb. He grew up listening to hillbilly music and was taught to play the guitar by his mother, Laura.
As a teenager, Scott pursued a singing career and recorded as "Jack Scott". At the age of 18, he formed the Southern Drifters. After leading the band for three years, he signed to ABC-Paramount Records as a solo artist in 1957.
After recording two good-selling local hits for ABC-Paramount in 1957, he switched to the Carlton record label and had a double-sided national hit in 1958 with "Leroy" (No. 11) / "My True Love" (No. 3). The record sold over one million copies, earning Scott his first gold disc. Later in 1958, "With Your Love" (No. 28) reached the Top 40. In all, six of 12 songs on his first album became hit singles. On most of these tracks, he was backed up by the vocal group the Chantones.
Scott released his penultimate album in 1995, a live set recorded with British band the Class of '58 while headlining at the 1994 Rockhouse Festival in the Netherlands.
In 2007, Jack Scott was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame. In 2011, he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Scott's final album, the studio album Way to Survive was released in 2015.
Scott lived most of his life in Hazel Park, Michigan, before moving to nearby Sterling Heights in his later years. He suffered a heart attack on December 6, 2019, and died six days later at St. John Macomb Hospital in Warren, Michigan, aged 83.
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