Jeff Scott

Piedmont blues artist Jeffrey Scott from Culpeper, Virginia is a man of countless roles and talents. Having grown up with 17 aunts and uncles who all played guitars and banjos – one being National Folk Heritage Award winning blues legend John Jackson – music has been a major part of Scott’s life from a young age. However, he has not always just sung the blues.

Being raised on a farm, Scott developed an early love for agriculture that has carried on from childhood, and he now raises Texas Longhorn cattle on his 200 acres of land in Virginia. Several of Scott’s family members worked in the funeral home business; therefore as he got older he became intrigued by this work and was employed at three different funeral homes. His father also had a trucking business that he worked for during his summers when he was home from school. After college he continued farming for himself but, with influences from his father’s side of the family, also began a career in law enforcement during which he became Culpeper’s sheriff for 19 years. Though he served full-time in the sheriff’s office, Scott continued his career in the funeral home as well, working days and nights with little rest. At age 30 he had even become a licensed deacon of the church. After breaking his back in a tragic farming accident, though, Scott was forced to give up his position as sheriff.

When his uncle John Jackson grew ill in the early 1990s, Scott decided to turn his musical background into a career in hopes of continuing his uncle’s legacy. “The only way for other people to know this music is to show young people,” Scott said. “It’s like being in a relay race, you run so far around the track and you have to pass the baton to the next person. My guitar is a metaphor for the baton.”

For several years now, Scott has kept alive his uncle’s traditions of Piedmont blues along with his own styles of country blues, gospel, jazz, and ragtime. Along with proficiency on guitar and trombone, he has mastered the arts of banjo, autoharp, and tuba as well. Scott explains the numerous roles taken on throughout his life, claiming, “I think a bluesman has to wear many hats because he can’t make a living just wearing the blues.” This talented musician, who holds there is a blues song for anything you can think of, unfolds enthralling tales of his life through the music he plays.