Gil Scott-Heron (born
April 1 1949) is an
American
poet, musician, and
author known primarily for his late 1960s and
early 1970s work as a spoken word
soul performer and his collaborative work with musician
Brian Jackson. His
collaborative efforts with Jackson featured a musical fusion of
jazz, blues and soul music, as well as lyrical content concerning
social and political issues of the time, delivered in both
rapping and
melismatic
vocal styles by Scott-Heron. The music of these albums, most
notably
Pieces of a Man and
Winter in America in the
early 1970s, influenced and helped engender later African-American
music genres such as
hip hop and
neo soul. Scott-Heron's recording work is
often associated with
black militant
activism and has received much critical acclaim for one of his most
well-known compositions "
The Revolution Will Not Be
Televised". On his influence,
Allmusic
wrote "Scott-Heron's unique proto-rap style influenced a generation
of hip-hop artists".
Early years
Gil
Scott-Heron was born in Chicago,
Illinois
, but spent his early childhood in Jackson, Tennessee
, the home of his maternal grandmother Lillie
Scott. Gil's mother, Bobbie Scott-Heron, sang with the New
York Oratorial Society.
Scott-Heron's father, Giles "Gil" Heron of Jamaican
descent,
nicknamed "The Black Arrow", was a football (soccer) player who, in the 1950s,
became the first black athlete to play for Glasgow's
Celtic Football Club. When Scott-Heron was
13 years old, his grandmother died and he moved with his mother to
the Bronx
in New York
City, where he enrolled in DeWitt Clinton High
School. He later transferred to
The Fieldston School after one of his
teachers, a Fieldston graduate, showed one of his writings to the
head of the English department at Fieldston and he was granted a
full
scholarship.
Scott-Heron attended Lincoln University
in Pennsylvania
, as it was
the college chosen by his biggest influence Langston Hughes. It was here that
Scott-Heron met
Brian
Jackson with whom he formed the band
Black & Blues. After about two years
at Lincoln Scott-Heron took a year off to write the novels
The
Vulture and
The Nigger Factory.
He returned to New
York City, settling in Chelsea,
Manhattan
, which was a multiracial
and multicultural neighborhood.
The Vulture was published in 1970 and well received.
Although Scott-Heron never received his
undergraduate degree, he has a
Masters degree in Creative Writing from
Johns Hopkins
University.
Recording career
Scott-Heron began his recording career in
1970 with the
LP Small Talk at 125th and
Lenox.
Bob Thiele of
Flying Dutchman Records produced the
album, and Scott-Heron was accompanied by Eddie Knowles and Charlie
Saunders on conga and David Barnes on percussion and vocals. The
album's 15 tracks dealt with themes such as the superficiality of
television and mass consumerism, the hypocrisy of some would-be
Black revolutionaries, white middle-class ignorance of the
difficulties faced by inner-city residents, and
homophobia. In the liner notes, Scott-Heron
acknowledged as influences
Richie
Havens,
John Coltrane,
Otis Redding,
Jose
Feliciano,
Billie Holiday,
Langston Hughes,
Malcolm X,
Huey Newton,
Nina Simone, and the
pianist who would become his long-time collaborator,
Brian Jackson.
Scott-Heron's
1971 album
Pieces of a Man used more conventional
song structures than the loose,
spoken-word feel of
Small Talk. He was
joined by Johnny Pate (conductor),
Brian
Jackson on
keyboards,
piano,
Ron Carter on
bass and
bass
guitar,
drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, Burt Jones playing
electric guitar, and
Hubert Laws on
flute and
saxophone, with Thiele producing again.
Scott-Heron's third album,
Free Will, was released in
1972. Jackson, Purdie, Laws, Knowles,
and Saunders all returned to play on
Free Will and were joined by
Jerry Jemmott playing
bass,
David
Spinozza on
guitar, and Horace Ott
(arranger and conductor).
1974 saw another LP collaboration with
Brian Jackson, the critically acclaimed opus
Winter in America, with
Bob Adams on drums and Danny Bowens on bass. The
album contained Scott-Heron's most cohesive material and featured
more of Jackson's creative input than his previous albums had.
Winter in America has been regarded by many critics as the
two musicians most artistic effort. The following year, Scott-Heron
and Jackson also released
Midnight Band: The First Minute of
a New Day. A live album,
It's Your World, followed in 1976 and a
recording of spoken poetry,
The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron,
was released in 1979. Another hit success followed with the hit
single "Angel Dust", which he recorded as a single with producer
Malcolm Cecil. "Angel Dust" peaked at
#15 on the
R&B charts in
1978.
In 1979,
Scott-Heron played at the No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden
. The concerts were organized by Musicians United for Safe
Energy to protest the use of nuclear
energy following the Three Mile Island
accident
. Scott-Heron's song "We Almost Lost
Detroit", written about a previous accident at a
nuclear power plant, was included in the
No Nukes album of concert
highlights. Scott-Heron was a frequent critic of President
Ronald Reagan and his conservative
policies.
Scott-Heron recorded and released only four albums during the
1980s;
1980 and
Real Eyes in 1980,
Reflections in 1981 and
Moving Target in 1982.
Ron Holloway on
tenor saxophone was added to Gil's ensemble
in February 1982. He toured extensively with Scott-Heron and
contributed to his next album,
Moving Target that same
year. His tenor is prominently featured on the songs "Fast Lane"
and "Black History/The World". Holloway continued with Scott-Heron
until the summer of 1989, when he left to join
Dizzy Gillespie. Several years later,
Scott-Heron would make cameo appearances on two of Ron Holloway's
CD's;
Scorcher (1996) and
Groove Update (1998),
both on the Fantasy/Milestone label.
Scott-Heron was dropped by
Arista
Records in
1985 and quit
recording, though he continued to tour. He also appeared in the
Sun City track, "Let Me See Your
ID" in 1985. In 1993, he signed to
TVT
Records and released
Spirits, an album that included
the seminal track "'Message to the Messengers". The first track on
the album criticized the rap artists of the day. Scott-Heron is
known in many circles as "the Godfather of
rap" and is widely considered to be one of the
genre's founding fathers. Given the political consciousness that
lies at the foundation of his work, he can also be called a founder
of
political rap.
Message to the
Messengers was a plea for the new generation of rappers to
speak for change rather than perpetuate the current social
situation, and to be more articulate and artistic. On hip hop music
in the 1990s, Scott-Heron later said in an interview:
Later years
In 2001, Gil Scott-Heron was sentenced to one to three years'
imprisonment in New York State for possession of
cocaine. While out of jail in 2002, he appeared on
the
Blazing Arrow album by
Blackalicious. He was released on
parole in 2003.
On July 5, 2006, Scott-Heron was
sentenced to two to four years in a New York
State
prison for violating a plea deal on a
drug-possession charge by leaving a drug rehabilitation center.
Scott-Heron's sentence was to run until July 13, 2009. He was
paroled on May 23, 2007. The reason given for the violation of his
plea was that the clinic refused to supply Scott-Heron with HIV
medication. This story led to the presumption that the artist is
HIV positive.
After his release, Scott-Heron began performing live again,
starting with a show at
SOBs in New York on
September 13, 2007. On stage, he stated that he and his musicians
were working on a new album and that he had resumed writing a book
titled
The Last Holiday, previously on long-term hiatus,
about
Stevie Wonder and his successful
attempt to have the birthday of
Martin Luther King Jr. declared a
federally recognized holiday in the United States. He was arrested
October 10, 2007, the day before a scheduled (but ultimately
cancelled) second SOBs performance, on felony possession of cocaine
charges. However, he has continued to make live appearances at
various US venues during the course of 2008 and 2009, including
further appearances at SOBs in New York. He has also stated in
interviews that work is continuing on his new album, which will
consist mainly of new versions of some of his classic songs plus
some cover versions of other artists' work.
Having originally planned to publish
The Last Holiday in
2003, before it was put on hold, Canongate Books now tentatively
intend to issue it in January, 2011. The book was due to be
previewed via a website set to be launched on April 1, 2009, but
this did not appear.
Mark T. Watson, a student of Scott-Heron's work,
dedicated a collection of poetry to Gil titled
Ordinary Guy that contained a foreword by
Jalal Mansur Nuriddin of
The Last Poets.
The book was
published in the UK
in
2004 by Fore-Word Press
Ltd. Scott-Heron recorded one of the poems in Watson's book
Black & Blue due for release in 2008 as part of the
album
Rhythms of the Diaspora by Malik & the OG's on
the record label CPR Recordings.
Influence
The music of Scott-Heron's work during the 1970s influenced and
helped engender later African-American music genres such as
hip hop and
neo
soul. On his influence, a music writer later noted that
"Scott-Heron's unique proto-rap style influenced a generation of
hip-hop artists".
The Washington
Post wrote that "Scott-Heron's work presaged not only
conscious rap and poetry slams, but also acid jazz, particularly
during his rewarding collaboration with
composer-keyboardist-flutist Brian Jackson in the mid- and late
'70s."
Present
In 2010 Scott-Heron will release his first album in 13 years on
XL Recordings, titled 'I'm New Here'
and produced by label owner
Richard Russell. Earlier this year the website
imnewhere.net was launched previewing the song "Where
Did The Night Go"
Discography
Studio albums
Compilations
| Year |
Album |
Label |
| 1974 |
The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised |
Flying Dutchman |
| 1979 |
The Mind of Gil
Scott-Heron |
Arista Records |
| 1984 |
The Best of Gil Scott-Heron |
Arista Records |
| 1988 |
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised |
Bluebird Records |
| 1990 |
Glory: The Gil Scott-Heron Collection |
Arista Records |
| 1998 |
The Gil Scott-Heron Collection Sampler: 1974-1975 |
TVT Records |
| 1998 |
Ghetto Style |
Camden Records |
| 1999 |
Evolution and Flashback: The Very Best of Gil
Scott-Heron |
RCA Records |
| 2005 |
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Messages
(Anthology) |
Soul Brother Records |
|
Bibliography
| Year |
Title |
ISBN |
| 1970 |
The Vulture |
0862415284 |
| 1970 |
Small Talk at 125th and Lenox |
|
| 1972 |
The Nigger Factory |
0862415276 |
| 1990 |
So Far, So Good |
0883781336 |
| 2001 |
Now and Then: The Poems of Gil Scott-Heron |
086241900X |
| 2003 |
The Last Holiday (unpublished) |
1841953415 |
Filmography
References
External links
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