Dates

• Existence: 1956 - 2021

Biography

Scott M. Bock was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1956. He told anyone who would listen that his love of the blues was related to a heart condition which doctors predicted would lead to an early death. His heartbeat irregularly, frequently requiring hospitalization.

Scott found the insistent blues beat comforting and the vocals powerful and healing. He somehow lived through the heart condition and the blues became a central aspect of his life.

As the Founder and CEO of Riverside Community Care, for nearly 40 years Scott was busy running a large mental health and human service organization just outside of Boston. In any time he could find, he collected records, photographed his favorite artists, and wrote stories about them. Eventually, many of his vacations included trips to interview musicians and to travel or hang out with them.

Scott eventually published 400 feature stories on musicians ranging from Millie Jackson and Lazy Lester to Robert Randolph and Gary Clark, Jr. His photos are in a collection in the archives at the J.D. Williams Library in University Mississippi. And posters and artwork related to blues are in a collection at Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Scott spent significant time in Lafayette, Louisiana, Austin and Dallas Texas, as well as Mississippi and Illinois. He often interviewed artists in their homes and focused on men and women who might never have their history recorded despite a rich history in music. Scott’s effort to document blues men and women typically meant sitting with artists for a few hours and taping them and then transcribing that conversation. He often learned things about the artists that had never been revealed before. Millie Jackson and Sugar Blue’s stories are good examples of gaining a complete understanding of artists lives that had never been fully shared before. His writing can be found in Living Blues, Blues and Rhythm (UK), Block (Netherlands), Juke (UK), Soul Bag and ABS (France) and several other publications as well as on dozens of liner notes. Scott shared his 5,000 piece record collection and publications permanently with UMKC to encourage students and others to study and fall in love with the blues.

Found in 1 Collection or Record: