Collection: Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949 to Bobbie Scott, a Mississippi-born opera singer, and Gil Heron, a soccer player. After his parents divorced he was raised by his grandmother in Jackson, Tennessee, and later lived in New York City. He attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He called himself a bluesologist, defined as a scientist concerned with the origin of the blues, and he was also a novelist and poet. Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (Flying Dutchman, 1970) was an album of his poems that included “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “Whitey on the Moon.” With keyboardist and flautist Brian Jackson he then built a jazz, funk and soul sound. Pieces of a Man (1971) carried “Lady Day and John Coltrane” and “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” with Ron Carter on bass, Bernard Purdie on drums and Hubert Laws on flute and saxophone. After a dispute with the label that ended his Flying Dutchman run, he and Jackson recorded Winter in America for Strata-East in 1973 (released 1974), with the original “The Bottle.” In 1975 he moved to Clive Davis’s Arista, where he worked with Jackson through It’s Your World (1976). His music is widely credited with foreshadowing hip hop and neo soul. He struggled with addiction for years. His last album, I’m New Here (XL Recordings, 2010), was critically acclaimed. He died in New York City on 27 May 2011, aged 62.