Ronnie Scott was born in
Aldgate,
East London, into a Jewish family. His father, Joseph Schatt, was of Russian ancestry, and his mother Sylvia's family attended the Portuguese synagogue in Alie Street. Scott attended the
Central Foundation Boys' School. Scott began playing in small jazz clubs at the age of 16. He toured with trumpeter
Johnny Claes from 1944 to 1945 and with
Ted Heath in 1946. That same year, he appeared as one of the band members in
George in Civvy Street. He worked with
Ambrose,
Cab Kaye, and
Tito Burns. He was involved in the short-lived musicians' co-operative Club Eleven band and club (1948–50) with
Johnny Dankworth. Scott became an acquaintance of the arranger/composer
Tadd Dameron, when the American was working in the UK for Heath, and is reported to have performed with Dameron as the pianist, at one Club Eleven gig. Scott was a member of the generation of British musicians who worked on the Cunard liner
Queen Mary intermittently from 1946 to around 1950. The ship would sail to New York City where they were exposed to
Bebop, the new form of jazz being played in the clubs there.
Charles Mingus said of him in 1961, "Of the white boys, Ronnie Scott gets closer to the negro blues feeling, the way
Zoot Sims does." Scott recorded infrequently during the last few decades of his career. He suffered from depression. While recovering from surgery for tooth implants, he died at the age of 69 from an accidental overdose of
barbiturate prescribed by his dentist. The Westminster coroner's inquest in February 1997 recorded a verdict of '
death by misadventure'. Ronnie Scott's widow, Mary Scott, and her daughter, Rebecca Scott, wrote the memoir
A Fine Kind of Madness: Ronnie Scott Remembered, with a foreword by
Spike Milligan. The book was published in 1999 in London by
Headline Book Publishing. ==Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club== Scott is perhaps best remembered for co-founding, with former tenor sax player
Pete King,
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, which opened on 30 October 1959 in a basement at 39
Gerrard Street in
London's
Soho district, with the debut of a young alto sax player named
Peter King (no relation), before later moving to a larger venue nearby at 47
Frith Street in 1965. The original venue continued in operation as the "Old Place" until the lease ran out in 1967, and was used for performances by the up-and-coming generation of domestic musicians. Scott regularly acted as the club's genial
master of ceremonies, and was noted for his repertoire of jokes, asides and one-liners. A typical introduction might go: "Our next guest is one of the finest musicians in the country. In the city, he's crap". Another memorable announcement was: "Next week we're proud to have a quartet featuring
Stan Getz and violinist
Stuff Smith. It's called the 'Getz-Stuffed quartet'." Ronnie often used in later days the services of John Schatt to book rock bands for Ronnie Scott's upstairs. Ronnie Scott told Showbusiness journalist
Don Short in 1970:Pop has poached on jazz without apology. That may irritate many jazzmen, but not me. I would never lose any sleep over it. It’s for the fans to choose the music they want to hear. I play. I don’t attempt to convert. But many young people are discovering just how hip jazz is. After Scott's death, King continued to run the club for a further nine years, before selling the club to theatre impresario
Sally Greene in June 2005. In September 2013, while the club was being redecorated, a 12-metre-square (39 ft2) hoarding was placed on the Frith Street façade as a tribute to its eponymous founder, bearing a giant photograph of Ronnie Scott by
Val Wilmer, alongside one of his one-liners: "I love this place, it's just like home, filthy and full of strangers." ==Selected band line-ups==