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Jack Scott
There's Trouble Brewin' / Jingle Bell Slide - 7"
Groove - 1963
Michael Panontin
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When Jack Scott died of congestive heart failure on Dec. 12, 2019, there was an almost immediate outpouring of tributes on the internet, including from singer Robert Gordon, who released his own version of Scott's iconic 'The Way I Walk' in 1978. "Jack Scott was a major influence on me, a first-generation rocker who was bigger than life," he told The Globe and Mail newspaper. "I'll always be a huge fan." All that came as a bit of a surprise to most of the music world, who had regarded Scott as a bit of a forgotten man.
Which is strange given that the Windsor (ON)-raised, Detroit-based singer charted an astounding 19 singles in a span of just 41 months between 1958 and 1961, a feat topped by very few performers. The bulk of those hits came out on the Carlton and Top Rank labels and featured his Windsor mates the Chantones as backing singers. But in March 1961, just towards the end of that illustrious string of successes, Scott made the jump over to Capitol Records, and it was then that his career started its downward slide.
"When I was with Carlton and Top Rank, they let me do what I wanted to do," he explained to music historian Colin Escott. "On Capitol, the producer would get the wild track going and say, 'This is the trend of music that's happening today' and try to get me to do it. It might have been happening but it wasn't good for me." What's more, without the Chantones and without his usual guitarist Al Allen, Scott was reduced to, in his words, "just the voice". Even more frustrating for Scott was having to bend his style for the country market. "I loved country music but I wasn't a country artist."
And so in December of 1962, with not one record getting anywhere close to the top 40, Capitol unceremoniously dropped Scott from their roster. After nearly signing on to a still-young Motown, Scott eventually joined the recently revived Groove imprint - this at the invitation of Chet Atkins - and though his short stint with the RCA subsidiary produced no hits, it did at least allow Scott to get back to what he did best...rootsy, hillbilly-tinged rock 'n' roll.
'There's Trouble Brewin'' came out just in time for Christmas 1963. Set to a rollicking rockabilly beat and with Scott's voice in full-on Elvis mode, the song tells the story of a man's simmering jealousy when he finds out that his girlfriend "grinned and said she was out with Ol' Santa Claus". And when he finds out that he's "dressed in red [and] he's a-coming down my chimney", well, let's just say that there's going to be trouble a-brewing tonight. The flip, a revved-up take on good old 'Jingle Bells' is a tad cheesy, but is certainly worth a listen, not least for that ultra-cool Johnny Cash baritone intro of "Hip, hip, sliding along / Hip, hip, sliding along."
(In all, Jack Scott issued five singles on Groove, none of which to be honest were as good as these two sides. The Bear Family label issued them on the twenty-track Jack Scott on Groove LP in 1980, reissued onto CD in 1989.)
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