Gil Scott Heron, whose spoken-word compositions fused jazz and blues with razor-sharp political insights about American culture and racial inequality, died Friday at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. He was 62.

Performing in the 1970s and 1980s, the Chicago-born Scott-Heron had at least one Baltimore connection: he got a Masters in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins in 1972.

Signature Scott-Heron pieces like “Whitey on the Moon” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” sound “as vital and scornfully brilliant now as they did when he recorded them nearly 40 years ago,” writes New Yorker staffer Alec Wilkinson, who profiled Scott-Heron in the magazine last year.

Scott-Heron’s early albums, “Pieces of a Man” and “Winter in America,” have been credited with influencing other musical genres like hip hop and rap, delivering often lyrical but almost always political, images. From “Whitey on the Moon”:

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon)

A Declaimer who Studied the Music

Scott-Heron has been called “the godfather of rap,” but he shied away from the association in the New Yorker piece and famously criticized rappers in 1993.

His “Message to the Messengers,” from the album Spirits, was a plea for the new generation of rappers to speak for change, rather than perpetuate the current social situations. Here’s a quote from Scott-Heron about hip-hop artists that can be found on his Wikipedia page, but originated from the website Chickenbones, which posted some good appreciations of Scott-Heron upon his passing:

“They need to study music. I played in several bands before I began my career as a poet. There’s a big difference between putting words over some music, and blending those same words into the music,” he said. “There’s not a lot of humor. They use a lot of slang and colloquialisms, and you don’t really see inside the person. Instead, you just get a lot of posturing.”

After a 13-year hiatus from making music, Scott-Heron put out a new album last year called “I’m New Here,” the peg for Wilkinson’s piece. Much of the article focused on Scott-Heron’s long struggle with substance abuse, but it also sought to explain Scott-Heron’s tremendous appeal. The man was not so much a singer, as a declaimer, the bassist Ron Carter, who worked with Scott-Heron, told Wilkinson.

“He wasn’t a great singer, but, with that voice, if he had whispered it would have been dynamic,” Carter said. “It was a voice like you would have for Shakespeare.”

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“The Revolution will Not Be Televised”
by Gil Scott Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

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