We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
Here is another artist I didn’t discover until college. Gil Scott-Heron was a singer-songwriter-poet best remembered for his work with Brian Jackson and his polemics about the “black” experience in America during the 1970’s.
I first discovered him from his rants about Watergate and the subsequent pardon of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford (aka “Oatmeal Man”) on LPs from later in the decade.
His 1972 LP was called “Free Will” and it contained an entire side of his word-poems including the trenchant “Ain’t No New Thing”. Although he can go over the top with this stuff (see The King Alfred Plan which was fictional but he treats as real), it is interesting how some of his comments could be talking about the situation in America today, 50 years later. What goes around, comes around indeed.
I like much of side one including the funky “The Get Out Of The Ghetto Blues” and the title track.
Jackson provides much of the musical backing joined by folks like Davd Spinoza, Bernard Purdie, Hubert Laws and Gerry Jenmott.
It’s a slice of what was happening in certain parts of America and there’s nothing wrong with listening to that.
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