FYI!
Gill is back!
BJ {William M. Johnson}
*WE WHO
BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CANNOT REST*
http://www.commongroundrelief.org www.angola3.org
If your vision is for one year, plant rice~
If your vision is for 10 years, plant trees~
But if your vision is for 100 years, educate children."
*African proverb*
Gil Scott-Heron @ Coachella 2010 (more by Rachel Carr)
Gil Scott-Heron is a touring machine now that he's so back in the
public eye thanks to a great new album on the high profile XL Records. Recently
at Coachella and currently in Europe, the legend's next NYC
show will be a free and in a park:
Thursday, August 5th @ Marcus
Garvey Park in Manhattan 7pm to
be exact.
Biography by John Bush, All
Music Guide
One of the most important
progenitors of rap music, Gil Scott-Heron's aggressive, no-nonsense street
poetry inspired a legion of intelligent rappers while his engaging songwriting
skills placed him square in the R&B charts later in his career, backed by
increasingly contemporary production courtesy of Malcolm Cecil and Nile Rodgers (of Chic). Born in Chicago but transplanted to
Tennessee for his early years, Scott-Heron spent most of his high-school years
in the Bronx, where he learned firsthand many of the experiences which later
made up his songwriting material. He had begun writing before reaching his
teenage years, however, and completed his first volume of poetry at the age of
13. Though he attended college in Pennsylvania, he dropped out after one year
to concentrate on his writing career and earned plaudits for his novel, The
Vulture. Encouraged at the end of the '60s to begin recording by legendary jazz
producer Bob Thiele -- who had
worked with every major jazz great, from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane -- Scott-Heron released his 1970
debut, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, inspired by a volume of poetry of the
same name. With Thiele's Flying Dutchman
Records until the mid-'70s, he signed to Arista soon after and found success on
the R&B charts. Though his jazz-based work of the early '70s was tempered
by a slicker disco-inspired production, Scott-Heron's message was as clear as
ever on the Top 30 single "Johannesburg" and the number 15 hit
"Angel Dust." Silent for almost a decade, after the release of his
1984 single "Re-Ron," the proto-rapper returned to recording in the
mid-'90s with a message for the gangsta rappers who had come in his wake;
Scott-Heron's 1994 album Spirits began with
"Message to the Messengers," pointed squarely at the rappers whose
influence -- positive or negative -- meant much to the children of the 1990s.
In a touching bit of irony
which he himself was quick to joke about, Gil Scott-Heron was born on April
Fool's Day 1949 in Chicago, the son of a Jamaican professional soccer player
(who spent time playing for Glasgow Celtic) and a college-graduate mother who
worked as a librarian. His parents divorced early in his life, and Scott-Heron
was sent to live with his grandmother in Lincoln, TN. Learning musical and literary
instruction from her, Scott-Heron also learned about prejudice firsthand, as he
was one of three children picked to integrate an elementary school in nearby
Jackson. The abuse proved too much to bear, however, and the eighth-grader was
sent to New York to live with his mother, first in the Bronx and later in the
Hispanic neighborhood of Chelsea.
Though Scott-Heron's
experiences in Tennessee must have been difficult, they proved to be the seed
of his writing career, as his first volume of poetry was written around that
time. His education in the New York City school system also proved beneficial,
introducing the youth to the work of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes as
well as LeRoi Jones. After publishing a novel called The Vulture in 1968, Scott-Heron
applied to Pennsylvania's Lincoln University. Though he spent less than one
year there, it was enough time to meet Brian Jackson, a similarly minded musician who
would later become a crucial collaborator and integral part of Scott-Heron's
band. Given a bit of exposure -- mostly in magazines like Essence, which called
The Vulture "a strong start for a writer with important things to
say" -- Scott-Heron met up with Bob Thiele and was encouraged to begin a music
career, reading selections from his book of poetry Small Talk at 125th &
Lennox while Thiele recorded a
collective of jazz and funk musicians, including bassist Ron Carter, drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie,
Hubert Laws on flute and alto saxophone, and
percussionists Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders; Scott-Heron also recruited Jackson to play on the record as pianist. Most
important on the album was "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," an
aggressive polemic against the major media and white America's ignorance of
increasingly deteriorating conditions in the inner cities. Scott-Heron's second
LP, 1971's Pieces of a Man,
expanded his range, featuring songs such as the title track and "Lady Day
and John Coltrane" which offered a more straight-ahead approach to song
structure (if not content).
The following year's Free Will was his last
for Flying Dutchman, however; after a dispute with the label, Scott-Heron
recorded Winter in America for
Strata East, then moved to Arista Records in 1975. As the first artist signed
to Clive Davis' new label,
much was riding on Scott-Heron to deliver first-rate material with a chance at
the charts. Thanks to Arista's more focused push on the charts, Scott-Heron's
"Johannesburg" reached number 29 on the R&B charts in 1975.
Important to Scott-Heron's success on his first two albums for Arista (First Minute of a New Day
and From South Africa to South Carolina)
was the influence of keyboardist and collaborator Brian Jackson, co-billed on both LPs and the
de facto leader of Scott-Heron's Midnight Band.
Jackson left by 1978, though, leaving the
musical direction of Scott-Heron's career in the capable hands of producer Malcolm Cecil, a veteran producer who had
midwifed the funkier direction of the Isley Brothers and Stevie Wonder earlier in the decade. The first
single recorded with Cecil, "The
Bottle," became Scott-Heron's biggest hit yet, peaking at number 15 on the
R&B charts, though he still made no waves on pop charts. Producer Nile Rodgers of Chic also helped on production during the
1980s, when Scott-Heron's political attack grew even more fervent with a new
target, President Ronald Reagan. (Several singles, including the R&B hits
"B Movie" and "Re-Ron," were specifically directed at the
President's conservative policies.) By 1985, however, Scott-Heron was dropped
by Arista, just after the release of The Best of Gil Scott-Heron.
Though he continued to tour around the world, Scott-Heron chose to discontinue
recording. He did return, however, in 1993 with a contract for TVT Records and
the album Spirits. For well over a
decade, Scott-Heron was mostly inactive, held back by a series of drug
possession charges. He began performing semi-regularly in 2007 and recorded an
album, I'm New Here, released on XL in 2010.