He was in a car on the road from Paris to Cherbourg, France, when Scott Randall Rhodes glanced out the car window and there, alongside the highway, was a billboard with his picture and name on it.

“It was shocking, to say the least,” said Rhodes, who lives in Vicksburg.

It all began 10 years ago after a chance meeting with Laurent Marie, a restaurateur from France.

Or was it chance? Rhodes doesn’t think so.

“Nothing is to chance,” he said, recounting the events that led to his French connection.

It was a March day in 1996 and Rhodes, who lived at Bovina, had a new car that he took to town to have it washed. He was going to let the wind dry it on the drive home, but it didn’t do it to his satisfaction, so he pulled into a rest stop a few miles out of town, got out and, with a towel, started buffing it.

“This car pulled up and the man had a map in his hand, so I spoke to him and said, ‘Are you lost?’ and he said, ‘Yes. He was looking for Chattanooga, Tenn.,” Rhodes said.

The man’s car was full of items, such as a pair of Texas longhorns, signs, horseshoes — “Really like an old junk collector, but it turned out he was collecting memorabilia for a pub he was going to turn into an American country/western restaurant in France.”

The Frenchman was Laurent Marie. He was not only lost, but he was running a fever and didn’t feel well. Rhodes extended Southern hospitality — “Come stay at my house.” He stayed three days, saw a lot of Vicksburg and met a lot of people.

“If you ever met somebody who was like your brother, but with a different mother, this is the case,” Rhodes said. “It is beyond kindred spirits. It feels that we are blood related.”

Marie heard Rhodes’ music, heard him play and sing, and liked it. He called his fiance in France and told her about his new friend. He told her, “I’m going to make him king of France,” for he had persuaded Rhodes to come to Cherbourg for the grand opening of the restaurant, where he would be the featured entertainer.

Later Marie and his wife came to America to visit Rhodes, who was then living in Nashville, and he took them to a catfish cafe with a country flair, Uncle Bud’s. They loved it. When Marie returned to France, he called Rhodes and said, “You know what? Everybody has a favorite uncle. I’m going to make you the most famous uncle in France if you’ll let me use your name and your face for my restaurant.”

“I was flattered,” Rhodes said, never dreaming that 10 years later there would be nine restaurants in a number of French cities, all named “Oncle Scott’s,” with the possibility of more, as Marie is preparing to sell franchises. There are now 35 billboards displaying Rhodes’ picture.

He now makes several trips a year to France and performs at each of the restaurants and is billed for an outdoor concert where he will be the headliner this summer. His visits — there have been 14 to date — may last from a few days to a month. The Maries provide him a place to stay and a car. Rhodes sings in English, as he only knows the bare essentials of French, but he says the restaurant patrons “get the music. They may not understand every word, but they feel the sentiment. The greatest compliment is when people say ‘You sing with your heart.’”

Rhodes began singing as a youngster, in school choirs and at church, in a boys ensemble at Clinton High School — he also attended Warren Central for a semester — and has very little formal training. He plays guitar and piano, mostly by ear, but claims to “play a mean radio, and also a CD player.” His musical talent, he said, probably comes from his dad who played bluegrass guitar.

Though Rhodes’ formal training was as a hairstylist, which he practiced for a number of years, his love has always been music, and growing up in Leake County he was exposed to quite a variety, from the Wilburn Brothers to Three Dog Night. He plays country, folk and acoustic guitar and enjoys the story lines that come from “the folk, rootsy-type music…Those songs ring true to me.”

Rhodes has written about 275 songs and was a staff writer for a Nashville publishing firm for eight years, driving for a time between homes in Tennessee and Mississippi. About 40 or 50 of his compositions have been recorded by independent artists, he has released a few CDs on his own and six of his songs are scheduled for recording by a French musician. His work with one Nashville musician included going to the CMA awards show, and he calls his time in Music City awesome.

Rhodes writes from his own experiences, has written some in 10 to 15 minutes, and there are others he has worked on for 12 years. He has co-authored songs with local musician William Michael Morgan, 15, who has a budding career. Recently Rhodes won first place in an international song-writing competition out of 1,300 entries and performed at the Hard Rock Cafe in Washington.

“The first song I wrote was ‘Bad Hair Day,’” he said. That’s when he was a stylist, and the song got a lot of play, was endorsed by the national cosmetology group, and Rhodes traveled a lot performing it at conventions — including before 9,000 people in Las Vegas.

Rhodes vividly recalls some defining moments in his life, one being his first trip to France when the plane developed engine problems and had to return to New York.

“I really thought I was going to meet my maker,” he said, “that my time had come,” and he thought of his family and friends. He realized that he was “bound by material things. I had a Maserati, an antebellum home, a good income, was going back and forth to Nashville trying to get doors opened, and I made a vow that, if I survived, to get my priorities in order.”

The plane made it safely back to New York, was repaired and continued to France. Rhodes had tried to change his reservation to the next day but couldn’t. He was lucky: the plane he tried to take crashed and all on board were killed. It’s a chilling irony that one of the victims was named Scott Rhodes — a fact that caused some anxious moments for Scott Randall Rhodes’ family and friends.

Of his trips to France, Rhodes said, “the greatest was when I took my mom, Mozelle, and she was really treated like a queen.” His father, who died in 1985, had given his son when he was 18 a guitar, “when my folks really had to stretch to afford it.” Mozelle saw it on display in a case at the original “Oncle Scott’s,” an indescribable moment for her.

In France, Rhodes has played with several bands, the current group named “Ohh, La La,” featuring “an incredible jazz guitarist who adds a terrific flavor to the rootsy music. I do country with a kick or twist, an upright bass player who also plays with big bands, and a drummer who plays all the way from bells and washboard, Cajun style, to a full drum set.”

Locally, Rhodes said, he plays in a duo with Fred Bolm, “but mostly in living rooms and at private parties.” Occasionally, he goes to Nashville to play at the legendary Blue Bird Cafe.

He feels that the French connection is definitely on the fast track, but “I didn’t seek any of it. It is a thing you could never create. It came to me.”

Was it a chance meeting when Scott Randall Rhodes met Laurent Marie 10 years ago?

He doesn’t think so.

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.