The rich musical tradition in the East Coast country blues owes much to ragtime, traditional Appalachian Mountain music, African American string music, spirituals and gospel, rural African American dance music, and the early white country music of the 1930s. This blues style features intricate fingerpicking with alternating bass and a simultaneous syncopated melody picked on the treble strings. Often called Piedmont Blues, this style has a certain sweetness in the guitar style, but the thematic of these blues can be about the sacred, or the profane, about hardship, struggle, murder, pain, suffering, drinking, trouble with the opposite sex, and more. It’s the blues where if you don’t understand the English, the singing and melody sounds so lovely and sweet, but if you hear and understand the words you can feel the bite
Down in Culpeper, Virginia, Jeffrey Scott is carrying on the acoustic Piedmont Blues tradition taught to him by his grand-uncle, the late great John Jackson, as well as from the musical and community heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountain Region His repertoire includes Piedmont Blues, Country Blues, Gospel, and Ragtime. Even at first impression, the style taught to him by John Jackson clearly comes through in both the singing style and the intricate fingerpicking. Like John Jackson, you meet a man with a friendly, sincere smile, and a welcoming, kind disposition. Scott is an affable character, as interesting and unique as they come, sharp-witted and delightful. Like his uncle, he is fun to be with, and an amazing storyteller, simply an enthralling personality.
Plus, he is the real deal, as country as they come. Scott looks the part with the trademark John Jackson bola tie and fedora hat, but unlike so many of his worldwide blues compatriots, he puts on no act to try to be a bluesman. He is one! The same fine hat he wears on the stage he wears on his successful family 100-acre family farm where he raises hogs and Texas Longhorn beef cattle. He’s an industrious farming entrepreneur and a devoted family man who is raising two teenage sons with his wife. By trade he is a mortician, he often drives long-distance trucks and he is a retired deputy sheriff. All the while he kept up the county blues tradition of the Piedmont, very similar to the way he was taught by his uncle John Jackson. He is an enthralling performer and storyteller who spellbinds an audience with his witty, funny and incisive stories.
Among one he likes to tell is that his mother was John Jackson’s oldest sister, the elder of 14 siblings. She was the one who gave John Jackson his first guitar. John Jackson told numerous writers how his sister bought him his first for $3.75 from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, a Harmony.
Jeffrey Scott used to back uncle, at whose feet he learned from early on at age six. He recalled some of the last words his uncle told him, “He said I’ve got to take the blues. It’s is just like being in a relay race. You have to take the blues and pass it on to someone else before you go.”
Scott reminisced, “It’s a little strange without Uncle Johnny sitting over there on my left saying,
Scott has brought his Blues Ridge Mountain blues to blues festivals around the country, including to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in 2007. His repertoire includes Piedmont blues, country blues, gospel, jazz and ragtime. He also plays banjo and autoharp. Besides his uncle, major musical influences of John Cephas, Doc Watson, Mississippi Jon Hurt, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake.
He recorded one album to date, the self-produced Rattlesnake Daddy (2002) a hard to find rarity with songs by Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Arthur Crudup and Big Bill Broonzy.
