Gil Scott-Heron was an influential American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author. He was born in Chicago in 1949 and spent his early years in Tennessee and New York. Scott-Heron is considered one of the founding fathers of rap music and is known for his socially conscious music and spoken word performances addressing issues of injustice and inequality in America. Over his career from the 1970s until his death in 2011, Scott-Heron released over a dozen albums and became known for hits like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and "Winter in America."

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A RBG BLAKADEMICS TRIBUTE
GIL SCOTT-HERON 100
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2. A Brief Biography
9:18
Black History & The
World - Gil Scott-Heron
[1982]
Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago, Illinois, but spent his early childhood
in the home of his grandmother Lillie Scott (mother's family) in Jackson,
Tennessee. Gil's mother Bobbie Scott-Heron
sang with the New York Oratorial Society. Gil's
DOCUMENTARY
2:59 father was a professional soccer player and is
RBG Black History-Gil- also a poet. His father's family is of Jamaican
Scott-Heron HIS-STORY descent. When he was 13, his grandmother died
and he moved with his mother to the Bronx,
where he enrolled in DeWitt Clinton High
School. He transferred to The Fieldston School
4:55 after one of his teachers, a Fieldston graduate,
Gil Scott Heron - Message showed one of his writings to the head of the
to the Messengers English department there and he was granted a
full scholarship. Gil attended Lincoln University
because it was the college of choice by his
biggest influence Langston Hughes. It was at
5:16 Lincoln University that Gil met Brian Jackson
Gil Scott Heron "The and they formed the band Black & Blues. After
Bottle" (1974) about two years at Lincoln University in
Pennsylvania, Scott-Heron took a year off to
write a novel The Vulture. He returned to New "BBC Originals: The Revolution
York City, settling in Chelsea, Manhattan, which Will Not Be Televised: A Film
was at the time a multiracial and multicultural About Gil Scott-Heron"
5:13
Gil Scott Heron & Brian neighborhood. The novel, The Vulture, was
Jackson- We Almost Lost published in 1970 and well received. Although
Detroit- Bridges Gil never received his undergraduate degree, he has a Masters in Creative
Writing from Johns Hopkins University.
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
8:34 album and Scott-Heron was accompanied by Eddie Knowles and Charlie
Gil Scott-Heron | Winter in Saunders on conga and David Barnes on percussion and vocals. The album's
America 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
fear of homosexuals. In the liner notes, Scott-Heron acknowledged as
2:51 influences Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Jose Feliciano,
Gil Scott-Heron - The
Revolution Will Not Be
Televised RBG TRIBUTE- GIL SCOTT-HERON 100
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3. Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Huey
5:49 Newton, Nina Simone, and the pianist who would
Gil Scott Heron- Angel become his long-time collaborator, Brian Jackson.
Dust
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 (piano and electric
3:18 piano), Ron Carter (bass and electric bass), Bernard
Gil Scott Heron "Home Is Pretty Purdie (drums), Burt Jones (electric guitar), and
Where The Hatred Is" RBG Black History: Gil
Hubert Laws (flute and saxophone), with Thiele
(1971) Scott Heron, His Story-
producing again. Scott-Heron's third album, Free Will,
Text, Video and Poster
was released in 1972. Jackson, Purdie, Laws,
Download
Knowles, and Saunders all returned to play on Free
Will and were joined by Jerry Jemmott (bass), David
Spinozza (guitar), and Horace Ott (arranger and
5:50 conductor).
Gil Scott Heron - Inner
city blues 1974 saw another LP collaboration with Brian Jackson, Winter in America,
with Bob Adams on drums and Danny Bowens on bass. He didn't reach the
charts until 1975 with the song Johannesburg, from the album From South
Africa to South Carolina. That year he and Jackson also released Midnight
Band: The First Minute of a New Day. A live album, It's Your World,
1:47 followed in 1976 and a recording of spoken poetry, The Mind of Gil Scott-
Gil Scott Heron -No Heron was released in 1979. His biggest hit came with a song called Angel
Knock 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 after the Three Mile Island accident by
Musicians United for Safe Energy to protest the use of nuclear energy. Scott-
3:44
Gil Scott Heron & Brian Heron's song We Almost Lost Detroit, about a previous accident at a nuclear
Jackson - Hello Sunday, facility, was included in the No Nukes album of concert highlights.
Hello Road
During the 1980s, Scott-Heron continued recording, releasing Reflections in
1981 and Moving Target in 1982.
Scott-Heron was a frequent critic of President Ronald Reagan and his
4:52 conservative policies:
Gil Scott Heron - The
Needle's Eye "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
5:42 RBG TRIBUTE- GIL SCOTT-HERON 100
Gil Scott Heron "Don't Page 2
Give Up"

4. 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 Records in 1985 and quit recording, though he continued to
tour. He also appeared in the Sun City (album) 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 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 everybody 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 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:
"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 sentenced to one to three years' imprisonment in New York State
for cocaine possession. 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 treatment center. Scott-Heron said
he is HIV-positive and claimed the in-patient rehabilitation center stopped giving him his
medication. The prosecution countered that Scott-Heron had once skipped out for an appearance
with singer Alicia Keys. Scott-Heron's sentence was to run until July 13, 2009. He was paroled
on May 23, 2007. He has since begun performing live again, starting with a show at SOBs in
RBG TRIBUTE- GIL SCOTT-HERON 100
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5. New York on 13 September 2007. On stage, he stated that he and his musicians were working on
a new album, and that he had resumed writing a book entitled "The Last Holiday" (previously on
long-term hiatus) about Stevie Wonder and his successful attempt to have Martin Luther King's
birthday made a national holiday in the USA. Gil was arrested October 10, the day before a
second SOB'S performance scheduled for October 11, 2007 on felony posession of cocaine
charges.
Scott-Heron's father, Giles "Gil" Heron (nicknamed "The Black Arrow") was a Jamaican football
player who played for Glasgow's Celtic Football Club in the 1950s. In fact, when he came to
Scotland from the United States to join Celtic in 1951 he became the team's first black player. At
the time, Celtic F.C. was the team of Scotland's Irish immigrants. However, Gil himself has said
that he supports Celtic's great rivals, Rangers.
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. Gil recorded one of the poems
in Mark T. Watson's book entitled "Black & Blue" due for release in 2008 as part of the album
"Rhythims of the Diaspora" by Malik & the OG's on the label "CPR recordings".
For more see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron
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