HUGHIE SCOTT: Oh, yeah. He’s The Man


By JIM HURCOMB Blink and you might miss Riceville, Ontario. It’s one of many


small towns scattered along the main roads of the Ottawa Valley. Towns like Riceville are a source of intense pride for Ottawans, who embrace the rural heritage of the nation’s capital city. The Valley has always had its own language, a strong sense of community, and its own musical heritage. Populated mainly by Scottish, Irish, English and French settlers,


Valley music traditionally mixed Celtic, Folk and Gaelic music driven by fiddles, guitars, step-dancing and big smiles. In the 50s, regional stars like Mac Beattie and The Melodiers and The Happy Wanderers, fronted by “Papa” Joe Brown, packed dance halls and taverns up and down the valley. This was the music that Hugh Scott grew up with. When he was


13, his family moved from Riceville to Ottawa, but by then the young teen was already a master at the fiddle and guitar. At age 15 he began his musical career, performing with Smokey


and the Drifters at the Chamberland Hotel in Aylmer, Quebec. Here, he perfected his Elvis routine and began to draw the attention of record companies and hundreds of fans. He soon had his own band, “The Meteors”, and, for 13 years, filled The Chamberland to capacity. He recorded the Wayne Rostad composition, “Good Time Lady” at


Snocan Studios, and then, sponsored by Texas-based Lise Records, he recorded his biggest hit, “Feed the Fire, Starve the Flame”, at Fireside Studios in Nashville. Back in the Valley, Hugh kept packing every room he played and


appeared on several feature TV shows of the time: Dick Maloney’s Saturday Date, Carl Smith’s Country Music Hall, Family Brown Country, and the Tommy Hunter Show. Hugh calls his early fiddle-playing talent “a gift from God”, but it


took a lot of plain, hard work and blisters to learn to play guitar. Like many young kids before him and after him, Hughie spent countless hours in front of the mirror, lip-syncing to Elvis Presley’s “Mystery Train”, and the songs of Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and his idol, Jerry Lee Lewis. He went to Fisher Park High School, which was no different than


any other school of the time in North America. The girls had Elvis pin-ups in their lockers. The boys all combed their hair like Elvis and copped “rebel” attitudes in the hallways. But Hugh Scott went one better: he could “be” Elvis. Those hours


of practicing in front of the mirror had paid off, and by his second year he was well known for his Elvis impersonations, almost as well known as another boy singer at Fisher Park named Paul Anka. “Every Friday afternoon there would be an assembly,” remembers


Hugh. “We’d all get up there, and nobody could stand Paul. Paul asked me to come up and play guitar with him, but my friends said they’d never talk to me again if I did.” While Anka would go south and become a superstar, back home


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there were no gold records for Hugh Scott. But he was knocking audiences dead with his Elvis routine and Rockabilly songs with Smokey and the Drifters at the Chamberland, the British Hotel and the Aylmer Hotel. He had become a big fish in a little pond, but that’s the way the Valley boy liked it. His ability to channel Elvis won


him a spot on Gord Atkinson’s Campus Hop, and as he remembers it, the reaction was pretty similar too. “The girls chased me into the


bathroom,” he says. “They had to call in extra security. They all had their hands out trying to grab me.” By the time he was 17, Hughie


had two bands on the go, playing on the Quebec side from the Chaud and Glenlea Golf Club down to the Aylmer strip. For 13 years Hughie Scott and the Meteors played seven nights a week at the Chamberlain Hotel in Aylmer. Every night was packed. When he moved down the road for


a residency upstairs at the Chaudiere, Hughie Scott became the second top-money-making performer in the country. When it came to Rock and Roll in this area, Hughie Scott was The Man. Four of his albums and 13 singles


made the local and national charts. He hobnobbed with Ronnie Hawkins and Waylon Jennings, who offered to bring Hughie down to Vegas to open for him. Hughie turned him down, although Jennings told him “I could be the next Willie Nelson.” Better to be a big fish in a little pond than just another face on the buses along the backroads of America. Hughie Scott offered a staging


ground for many local players. Les Emmerson played guitar for The Hugh Scott Show until he was lured away to join the Stacattos. Before he headed south a join Buffalo Springfield, Dewey Martin was his drummer. Rather than ignore the times, Hughie added a few Beatles songs to his repertoire from the British Invasion hit in ‘64, although he faithfully relied on his bread and butter: 50s Rockabilly and Rock and Roll. Somehow, between the constant continued on page 56


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