Gilbert Scott-Heron was born on the 1st of April 1949 in Chicago, but his true origin story began in the segregated South. His mother, Bobbie Scott, was an opera singer from Mississippi who performed with the Oratorio Society of New York, while his father, Gil Heron, was a Jamaican footballer known as The Black Arrow who became the first black man to play for Celtic F.C. in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1950s. When his parents separated, the young Gilbert was sent to live with his maternal grandmother, Lillie Scott, in Jackson, Tennessee. At the age of 12, following his grandmother's death, he moved to The Bronx in New York City to live with his mother. He enrolled at DeWitt Clinton High School before transferring to The Fieldston School, where he earned a full scholarship after impressing the head of the English department with his writings. As one of only five Black students at this prestigious institution, Scott-Heron faced a stark socioeconomic gap and alienation. During his admissions interview, an administrator asked him how he would feel seeing a classmate pass by in a limousine while he walked up the hill from the subway. Scott-Heron replied with characteristic boldness, stating that he felt the same way because the white students could not afford limousines either. This intractable boldness would become a hallmark of his later recordings, setting the stage for a career that would challenge the very structures of American society.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Scott-Heron began his recording career with the 1970 LP Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, produced by Bob Thiele of Flying Dutchman Records. The album's 14 tracks dealt with themes such as the superficiality of television, mass consumerism, and the hypocrisy of would-be black revolutionaries. The album included the spoken-word poem Whitey on the Moon, which directly addressed the racial disparities in the space race. His 1971 album Pieces of a Man used more conventional song structures than the loose, spoken-word feel of his debut, featuring a collaboration with Brian Jackson that fused jazz, blues, and soul. The following year, he released Free Will, which included the same core musicians from Pieces of a Man. In 1974, he recorded Winter in America, widely regarded by critics as the two musicians' most artistic effort. The album's title track, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, delivered over a jazz-soul beat, is considered a major influence on hip hop music. Scott-Heron referred to himself as a bluesologist, a term he coined for a scientist concerned with the origin of the blues. He cited Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay as those who had taken the blues as a poetry form in the 1920s and fine-tuned it into a remarkable art form. His work during the 1970s influenced and helped engender subsequent African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul, earning him the title of the godfather of rap.
Scott-Heron's music was deeply rooted in the Black Arts Movement, a cultural movement that sought to create art that reflected the Black experience and political consciousness. He was heavily influenced by The Last Poets, a group associated with the Black Arts Movement, and asked Abiodun Oyewole of that Harlem group after a 1969 performance at Lincoln University if he could start a group like them. Scott-Heron returned to New York City, settling in Chelsea, Manhattan, and published his first novel, The Vulture, in 1970 to positive reviews. He also wrote The Nigger Factory, though he never completed his undergraduate degree. He was admitted to the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where he received an M.A. in creative writing in 1972, with a master's thesis titled Circle of Stone. Beginning in 1972, he taught literature and creative writing as a full-time lecturer at the University of the District of Columbia while maintaining his music career. His 1975 single Johannesburg was a rallying cry for the end of apartheid in South Africa, and he was a frequent critic of President Ronald Reagan and his conservative policies. In 1979, he played at the No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden, organized by Musicians United for Safe Energy to protest the use of nuclear energy following the Three Mile Island accident. His song We Almost Lost Detroit was included in the No Nukes album of concert highlights, alluding to a previous nuclear power plant accident and also the title of a book by John G. Fuller.
The Godfather Of Rap And The 1980s
Scott-Heron recorded and released four albums during the 1980s: 1980 and Real Eyes in 1980, Reflections in 1981, and Moving Target in 1982. In February 1982, Ron Holloway joined the ensemble to play tenor saxophone, and his accompaniment became a prominent feature of 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. Scott-Heron was dropped by Arista Records in 1985 and quit recording, though he continued to tour. The same year, he helped compose and sang Let Me See Your I.D. on the Artists United Against Apartheid album Sun City, containing the famous line: The first time I heard there was trouble in the Middle East, I thought they were talking about Pittsburgh. The song compared racial tensions in the U.S. with those in apartheid-era South Africa, implying that the U.S. was not too far ahead in race relations. In 1991, Scott-Heron provided the voiceover for Tango's controversial Orange Man advert, and 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, and 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.
Prison Terms And The Return To Form
In 2001, Scott-Heron was sentenced to one to three years imprisonment in a New York State prison 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, the year BBC TV broadcast the documentary Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Scott-Heron was arrested for possession of a crack pipe during the editing of the film in October 2003 and received a six-month prison sentence. On the 5th of July 2006, he 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. He claimed that he left because the clinic refused to supply him with HIV medication, a story that led to the presumption that the artist was HIV positive, subsequently confirmed in a 2008 interview. Originally sentenced to serve until the 13th of July 2009, he was paroled on the 23rd of May 2007. After his release, Scott-Heron began performing live again, starting with a show at SOB's restaurant and nightclub in New York on the 13th of September 2007. On stage, he stated that he and his musicians were working on a new album and that he had resumed writing 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.
The Final Albums And The Last Holiday
In 2010, Scott-Heron released his album I'm New Here on independent label XL Recordings, his first studio album in 16 years. The pair began recording in 2007, but the majority of the album was recorded over the 12 months leading up to the release date, with engineer Lawson White at Clinton Studios in New York. The album is 28 minutes long with 15 tracks, and casual asides and observations collected during recording sessions are included as interludes. The album attracted critical acclaim, with The Guardian's Jude Rogers declaring it one of the best of the next decade, while some have called the record reverent and intimate, due to Scott-Heron's half-sung, half-spoken delivery of his poetry. The remix version of the album, We're New Here, was released in 2011, featuring production by English musician Jamie xx, who reworked material from the original album. In April 2014, XL Recordings announced a third album from the I'm New Here sessions, titled Nothing New, which consists of stripped-down piano and vocal recordings and was released in conjunction with Record Store Day on the 19th of April 2014. Scott-Heron described himself as a mere participant in the process, stating in a 2010 interview with The New Yorker that it was Richard Russell's CD and that he had no knowledge when he got to the studio other than how Russell seemed to have wanted this for a long time.
The Death And The Legacy
Scott-Heron died on the 27th of May 2011, in New York City after a trip to Europe. He had confirmed press speculation about his health when he disclosed in a 2008 New York Magazine interview that he had been HIV-positive for several years, and that he had been previously hospitalized for pneumonia. He was survived by his first-born daughter Raquiyah Nia Kelly Heron from his relationship with fellow writer, Pat Kelly, his son Rumal Rackley from his relationship with Lurma Rackley, daughter Gia Scott-Heron from his marriage to Brenda Sykes, and daughter Chegianna Newton, who was 13 years old at the time of her father's death. He was also survived by his sister Gayle, brother Denis Heron who once managed Scott-Heron, his uncle Roy Heron, and nephew Terrance Kelly, an actor and rapper who performs as Mr. Cheeks and is a member of Lost Boyz. Before his death, Scott-Heron had been in talks with Portuguese director Pedro Costa over his film Horse Money to be screenwriter, composer and an actor. His memorial service was held at Riverside Church in New York City on the 2nd of June 2011, where Kanye West performed Lost in the World and Who Will Survive in America, two songs from West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The studio album version of West's Who Will Survive in America features a spoken-word excerpt by Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron is buried at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County in New York.
The Estate And The Eternal Influence
At the time of Scott-Heron's death, a will could not be found. Raquiyah Kelly-Heron filed papers in Manhattan's New York Surrogate's Court in August 2013, claiming that Rumal Rackley was not Scott-Heron's son and should be omitted from the musician's estate. According to the Daily News website, Rackley, Kelly-Heron, and two other sisters were seeking a resolution to the management of the estate. Rackley stated in court papers that Scott-Heron had asked him to be the administrator of the estate. In 2011, Rackley had filed a suit against sister Gia Scott-Heron and her mother, Scott-Heron's first wife, Brenda Sykes, believing they had unfairly attained US$250,000 of Scott-Heron's money. That case was settled for an undisclosed sum in early 2013, but the relationship between Rackley and Scott-Heron's two adult daughters had already become strained in the months after Gil's death. In her submission to the Surrogate Court, Kelly-Heron stated that a DNA test completed by Rackley in 2011, using DNA from Scott-Heron's brother, revealed that they do not share a common male lineage, while Rackley has refused to undertake another DNA test. The case was decided in December 2018 when the Surrogate Court ruled that Rumal Rackley and his half-sisters are all legal heirs, and in a ruling issued in May 2019, Rackley was granted Letters of Administration. Scott-Heron was honored posthumously in 2012 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and his memoir, The Last Holiday, was published in January 2012. He is one of eight significant people shown in mosaic at the 167th Street renovated subway station on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that reopened in 2019, and he is included in the exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that officially opened on the 24th of September 2016, on the National Mall.