Jane Scott, my Aunt Jane turns 90 next month. Jane spent most of her writing career at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She loved being a reporter.
One of her friends created a video tribute to her on YouTube. Pretty nice. Take a look
One of her characteristics that often gets over looked was her interest and passion for new artists entering the music scene. In fact her interest in discovering new talent is what drove her each day. She spent hours listening to demo albums and long nights in the clubs around town. She wrote about what she found. This real interest in new talent and her hard work set her apart and established her as the ‘must meet’ journalist in Cleveland.
She was a night owl for sure and we all realized that when she visited the family up in Michigan. We were unpleasantly reminded each Christmas morning. We were not allowed to open any presents until Aunt Jane woke up. After a few years we got smart and pre-set the alarm clock in her room. She got wise to that really quickly. She followed her own clock that’s for sure. That was a pain in the back for us kids!
On her visits to Michigan to see our family, I remember her opening up the trunk of her car and it being filled with albums. There must have been 100 albums scattered across the trunk with just a few stacked nicely in a box. It was like that on every visit. As a teenager at the time, I recall recognizing very few of the artists. But that was how she worked.
I went to see Paul McCartney and Wings with her back in the mid to late 70’s. The concert was at the old Olympia Stadium in Detroit. It was a great show and Aunt Jane was taking notes the whole time. During the concert the person next to me passed over a joint and I looked at him and said “hey man, knock it off, I’m with my AUNT!”. She and I left our seats towards the end of the concert to go back stage. We got down there and she pressed hard to get in, not taking no for an answer and as I remember it she got in but was unable to get with Paul.
I went to London to attend the University of London for a semester. While I was there I spent a lot of my free time in the clubs. I made notes of the bands that I saw and sent a letter to Aunt Jane. She created a column covering the music scene that summer in London and referenced the bands that I had pointed out to her. Dixies Midnight Runners was one of them. I thought that was really nice of her.
She developed a national reputation and all the acts that came to town had to grant an interview with her. Her celebrity skyrocketed and People Magazine and the Wall Street Journal each wrote a piece on her. I remember seeing her in People. I was standing at a bus stop in San Francisco and glanced over the shoulder of a woman next to me reading a magazine. I recognized Aunt Jane in the article she was reading and blurted out “holy crap that’s my aunt”. The woman looked over at me and just frowned. The WSJ article was on the front page, center column, which I think amused my dad some (her brother) as he was a captain of industry at Ford but never got on the front page of the Journal (which might have been a gift actually).
So, congratulations to a real rock and roll legend. And a pretty good aunt to boot!
Do you have any memories to share about Jane Scott? I’d love to hear them.
