Marcus Baram - Gil Scott-Heron--Pieces of a Man

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To Liza and Roscoe

CONTENTS

The crowd of four hundred people, squeezed in front of the stage, whispered in nervous anticipation. The Sounds of Brazil, a small nightclub in downtown Manhattan, is known for showcasing world music from salsa and samba to bhangra and bossa nova. But on this night, the audience wasnt there to dance or to indulge their eclectic tastes. On September 13, 2007, a clear and balmy night, they were there to await the return of a long-missing artist, a creative genius who had reemerged into the light after a dark journey.

And he was late. While the minutes ticked, rumors ricocheted around the space. Man, I heard he nearly died up in there. Maybe he did and well just get a ghost up onstage tonight. If the ghost shows upyou know how Gil is. Maybe he took the money they gave him and smoked it up. I heard hes working on a new album. No, for real? Hes back? Its been so long. Ive been dying to hear some new Gil.

Somebody shushed the crowd, voices broke off in mid-sentence, and people turned their heads to look down below stage right. There, a tall, dark figure in a dark cap moved through the crowd with an unmistakable presencea jacket hanging on a skeleton, the figure barely shuffling along the floor but with a characteristically smooth stride. After mounting the steps, Gil Scott-Heron was handed a microphone and stepped to the front of the stage. He stood straight, though he leaned to his left. His sunken cheeks were framed by a scruffy white beard, and a few wisps of gray hair stuck out above his ears. He teetered on his feet and seemed on the verge of falling over but he kept standing. Eyes brightening, he opened his mouth in a gentle smile.

Good evening. His distinctive baritone broke the silence. Glad to be anywhere. Some members of the audience shouted, We love you! He bobbed back and forth, his shadow bouncing along behind him on the back wall of the club. For those of you who bet that I wouldnt make it here tonight, you lose!

The warm applause was more than just a greeting for a favorite son, whose annual preMartin Luther King Jr. Day concerts every January were eagerly anticipated by his fans. This was a special night because it marked Gils first concert since his release from prison five months earlier in May. He was paroled after serving almost a year in prison for violating a plea deal on a drug possession charge.

Gil had been battling drug addiction for more than two decades, releasing only one album since 1982 and often canceling concerts at the last minute, so his fans realized this was a special moment. It wasnt just the usual miracle that he was onstage, competently tapping out the chords to Home Is Where the Hatred Is on his trusty Fender Rhodes. Amid frequent rumors of his demise due to a fatal illness or old age or an overdose, and widespread fears that he wouldnt survive prison in his frail condition, here he was again, singing lyrics that were haunting in their self-referential poignancy:

You keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it

God, but did you ever try

To turn your sick soul inside out

So that the world, so that the world

Can watch you die

The moment lingered, the power of that image on everyones mind: a haunted soul baring his innermost pain and yearnings, almost like a ghost back from the dead to describe his death rattle to a rapt audience. But Gil wasnt playing along with the morbid mood. He smiled his crooked smile, winking at the audience and talking. Talking and jiving and rapping and joking and philosophizing like in the old days. He talked about an upcoming new album and a soon-to-be-released memoir, assuring his fans that the spirits were still guiding him and smiling on him. Sure, he was weaker and slower, but he was still Gil, the revolutionary prophet, griot, and stand-up comic who was always one step ahead of the rest of us.

With a touch of humor, Gil gently reminded the audience to take off Martin Luther King Jr. Day, describing the importance of the decade-long effort he helped lead to honor the civil rights icon. My grandma used to always say, If you dont stand for something, youll fall for anything. He took that lesson to heart, and it imbued his lyrics with a power and a sense of justice that few had matched over the last few decades. Amen, shouted a woman standing by the stage, nodding her head and clapping her hands. With that, Gil was back, even if it was only for a little while.

On April 1, 1949, a cold, drizzling day, at Chicagos Provident Hospital, one of the first black hospitals in the country, Gilbert Scott-Heron was born to Bobbie Scott and Gillie St. Elmo Heron. She was a librarian with a wicked wit and a creative yearning who grew up in the small town of Jackson, Tennessee. He was a professional soccer player with a charming smile and a competitive streak who was born in Jamaica.

Bobbies story evokes the journey of many African Americans in the Deep South. She was born in Jackson, a sleepy river town in western Tennessee, to Lillie Hamilton Scott and Robert William Scott, the second of their four children.

Bobbie, tall and graceful, was quietly observant and studious, with a sharp wit. She went to Lane Collegea black school created in Jackson in 1882 for former slaveswhere she flexed her literary skills. Assistant editor in chief of the school yearbook, she took classes in anthropology, history, linguistics, and international studies and graduated with a 4.9 grade point average. At age twenty-one, like millions of southern blacks who moved up north to take well-paying jobs and to escape the racism of the South, Bobbie headed north. In Chicago she moved in with her aunt Annabelle McKissack, a seamstress, and Annabelles husband, James, a chauffeur.

On a night in 1947, just a few months after she had moved to Chicago, Bobbie met Gillie St. Elmo Heron at the Windy City Bowling Lanes. Gillie cut a stylish figure, favoring the high-waisted pants popular at the time and dancing to big band hits like Louis Jordans Is You Is or Isnt You Aint My Baby? At six feet tall, with a copper complexion, brownish-red hair, and hazel eyes, he was quite a ladies man in the clubs.

He was impressed with Bobbies slim figure, her razor-sharp wit, and her nonchalance about what he did for a living. Its not clear if she recognized his name at that moment, but she soon learned about his fame as the first African American to play professional soccer in the United States.

Gillies journey to Chicago was a different migration from Bobbies. He was born in Jamaica to a well-known family that traced its roots back to Scotland. Herons lineage had its share of drama and tragedy familiar to many Caribbean people of African descent. His great-great-grandfather Alexander Heron left Wigtownshire in Scotland in 1790 for Jamaica to get rich in the slave trade. Three years later, he had a little land and owned a few slaves. By 1797, he had bought six hundred more acres and many more slaves on numerous coffee plantations, including Shooters Hill and Cane Valley. The Scots were notoriously brutal slave owners, and better at making money in the trade than the English. Even after slavery was outlawed on the island and across the British Empire in 1834, the Herons employed hundreds of former slaves in near-slavery conditions.