Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1 1949) is an American poet and musician known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word performer. He is associated with African-American militant activism, and is best known for his poem and song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".

History/overview

Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago, Illinois, but spent his early childhood in Tennessee and later moved to the Bronx where he attended high school. After spending a year in college at Lincoln University (Pennsylvania). He released his first novel, The Vulture, which was well-received.

He began his recording career in 1970 with the LP Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. He was assisted by Bob Thiele of Flying Dutchman Records, co-writer Brian Jackson, and jazz musicians Hubert Laws, Bernard Purdie (who later recorded "Delights of the Garden" with The Last Poets), Charlie Saunders, Eddie Knowles, Ron Carter and Bert Jones (see 1970 in music). The album included aggressive diatribes against white-owned corporate media and middle-class America's ignorance of the problems of inner cities in songs such as "Whitey on the Moon".

His 1971 album Pieces of a Man used more conventional song structures than the loose, spoken-word feel of Small Talk, and he didn't reach the charts until 1975 with the song "Johannesburg". His biggest hit was 1978's "The Bottle" (produced by Scott-Heron and longtime partner Brian Jackson), which peaked at #15 on the R&B charts (see 1978 in music).

During the 1980s, Scott-Heron continued recording, frequently criticizing President Ronald Reagan and his conservative policies:

"The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can -- even if it's only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment -- someone always came to save America at the last moment -- especially in 'B' movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan -- and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at -- like a 'B' movie." (Gil Scott-Heron, "'B' Movie")

Scott-Heron was dropped by Arista in 1985 (see 1985 in music) and quit recording, though he continued to tour. 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 was a position point poem to the rap artists of the day and included such comments as:

"Four-letter words or four-syllable words won't make you a poet, it will only magnify how shallow you are and let ev'rybody know it."
"Tell all them gun-totin' young brothers that the 'man' is glad to see us out there killin' one another! We raised too much hell, when they was shootin' us down."
"Young rappers, one more suggestion, before I get outta your way. I appreciate the respect you give to me and what you've got to say."

Scott-Heron is often seen as a founding father of rap. The poem 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:

"There's a big difference between putting words over some music, and blending those same words into the music. There's not a lot of humour. They use a lot of slang and colloquialisms, and you don't really see inside the person. Instead, you just get a lot of posturing."

In 2001, Gil Scott-Heron was incarcerated for cocaine possession. While out of jail in 2002, he appeared on the Blazing Arrow album by Blackalicious.

His father, 'The Black Arrow' Gil Heron, was a soccer player for Glasgow's Celtic Football Club in the 1950s. In fact, when he joined Celtic in 1951 he became the team's first black player ever. At the time, Celtic F.C. was the team of Scotland's Irish immigrants.

Mark T. Watson, a student of Scott-Heron's work, dedicated a collection of poetry to Gil entitled Ordinary Guy which also 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.

On July 5th, 2006, Scott-Heron was sentenced to two-to-four years in prison for violating a plea deal on a drug possession charge by leaving a treatment center. Heron said he is HIV-positive and claimed the in-patient rehab center stopped giving him his medication. The prosecution countered that Heron had once skipped out for an appearance with singer Alicia Keys.^*

Discography

Year	Album	Label
1970	Small Talk at 125th and Lenox	Flying Dutchman Records
1971	Pieces of a Man	Flying Dutchman Records
1972	Free Will	Flying Dutchman Records
1974	Winter in America	Strata-East Records
1974	The Revolution Will Not Be Televised	Flying Dutchman Records
1975	The First Minute of a New Day (Midnight Band)	Arista Records
1975	From South Africa to South Carolina	Arista Records
1976	It's Your World (Live)	Arista Records
1977	Bridges	Arista Records
1978	Secrets	Arista Records
1979	The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron	Arista Records
1980	1980	Arista Records
1980	Real Eyes	Arista Records
1981	Reflections	Arista Records
1982	Moving Target	Arista Records
1984	The Best of Gil Scott-Heron	Arista Records
1990	Tales of Gil Scott-Heron and His Amnesia Express	Arista Records
1990	Glory: The Gil Scott-Heron Collection	Arista Records
1994	Minister of Information	Peak Top Records
1994	Spirits	TVT 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

Books

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

Films

Black Wax (1982). Directed by Robert Mugge.

Samples

SmallTalkat125thandLennox.ogg from Small Talk at 125th and Lenox

External links

Gil Scott-Heron | Gil Scott-Heron | Gil Scott Heron | Gil Scott-Heron