The music world is mourning Gil Scott-Heron, the troubled poet and musician whose groundbreaking The Revolution Will Not Be Televised became a beacon for emerging rap and hip-hop culture.
Scott-Heron, who last year released his first album in 16 years to critical acclaim, died in a New York hospital on Saturday after returning from a European trip. He was 62.
Richard Russell, founder of the British label XL Recordings, who produced and published Heron's final work, said yesterday: "Gil was not perfect in his own life. But neither is anyone else. And he judged no one.
"He had a fierce intelligence, and a way with words which was untouchable; an incredible sense of humour and a gentleness and humanity that was unique to him."
Russell added that the Chicago-born artist, who never achieved chart success in spite of a loyal global audience for songs including the dance-floor favourite The Bottle, had shunned all the trappings of fame and success.
"He could have had all those things. But he was greater than that. He seemed wholly uninterested in money. His talent was immense. He was a master lyricist, singer, orator, and keyboard player. His spirit was immense. He channelled something that people derived huge benefit from."
Scott-Heron was a gifted child, raised in Tennessee by his maternal grandmother Lillie Scott after his parents - a Jamaican father who became the first black footballer to play for Celtic and a talented teacher mother - separated.
Lillie bought a beaten-up old piano from the funeral parlour next door and paid a neighbour to teach 8-year-old Gil how to play hymns for her sewing circle, including Rock of Ages and What a Friend We Have in Jesus.
When at the age of 12 he discovered his grandmother dead one morning he moved to New York to be reunited with his mother.
His keen intelligence propelled him into an academy and from there to Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, where he met his long-term musical collaborator Brian Jackson. He published his first novel at 19 and by the age of 23 his output had swollen to three books, a volume of poetry and three albums.
From his inner-city viewpoint Scott-Heron took the news of the day and spun it into hard-edged social commentary on issues as diverse as apartheid and nuclear energy. But the acid observational wit was sweetened by jazz-tinged soul and funk. His most famous composition, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, has been heralded as the birth of rap - a claim which the artist himself rejected. In fact a contemporary of Scott-Heron at university recalls how he was mesmerised by a performance by the Last Poets, a group inspired by the civil rights movement who performed their poems to a sparse drum backing.
Borrowing from their style he recorded The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in 1971 with Brian Jackson. It was a fiery critique of the role of race in the mass media age.
Scott-Heron's prodigious output - he recorded 13 albums between 1972 and 1980 - succumbed to a growing crack cocaine habit. In 1999 he was convicted of assaulting his partner Monique de Latour and in the last decade he was twice found guilty of possession, serving time in the notorious Rikers Island prison.
With the success of his recent collaboration with Russell on the album I'm New Here, there was renewed optimism that Scott-Heron was finally back on track.
But observers say the body of work he leaves behind him is more than enough to guarantee his place among the greats of political song.
- OBSERVER
Tributes for hip-hop culture pioneer
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