Gil Scott Heron Views

Music

Excerpted from a larger piece wirtten by John Bush, All Music Guide One of the most influential progenitors of rap music, srefer=/ctr=167270 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

Click to buy this CD 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, Tennessee. Learning musical and literary instruction from her, Scott-Heron also learned about prejudice first-hand, as he was one of three children picked to integrate an elementary school in nearby Jackson. The abuse proved to 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.

Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago, Illinois, but spent his early childhood in Jackson, Tennessee, the home of his maternal grandmother Lillie Scott. Gil's mother, Bobbie Scott-Heron, sang with the New York Oratorical Society. Scott-Heron's Jamaican father, Gilbert Gil Heron, nicknamed The Black Arrow , was a football (soccer) player who, in the 1950s, became the first black athlete to play for Glasgow's Celtic Football Club. Gil's parents divorced when he was young and Gil was sent to live with his Grandmother Lillie Scott.[2] When Scott-Heron was 13 years old, his grandmother died and he moved with his mother to the Bronx in New York City, where he enrolled in DeWitt Clinton High School. He later transferred to The Fieldston School after one of his teachers, a Fieldston graduate, showed one of his writings to the head of the English department at Fieldston and he was granted a full scholarship.

Scott-Heron recorded and released only four albums during the 1980s; 1980 and Real Eyes in 1980, Reflections in 1981 and Moving Target in 1982. Ron Holloway on tenor saxophone was added to Gil's ensemble in February 1982. He toured extensively with Scott-Heron and contributed to his next album, Moving Target that same year. His tenor is prominently featured on 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. Several years later, Scott-Heron would make cameo appearances on two of Ron Holloway's CD's; Scorcher (1996) and Groove Update (1998), both on the Fantasy/Milestone label.[6]