GIL SCOTT-HERON — Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (review)

GIL SCOTT-HERON — Small Talk at 125th and Lenox album cover Live album · 1970 · RnB Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane


Indeed it is mandatory to listen to this album with the historical context of the times – I doubt that you will manage without doing so with all of the names mentioned. Nowadays this could be almost called reverse-racism, with some gratuitous accusations hurled, but the repressed civil right movement did have attenuating circumstances. Gil Scott-Heron comes a little late in the CRM debate, and some of it was a bit rear-guard in retrospect. Anyway, not that this debut album is very much related to jazz, but GSH’s vocal rebellion can be likened to the all-out musical rebellion of the Coltrane, Coleman, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders and others against set rules imposed by the “white society” through the “classical mode”. The least we can say is that GSH’s propos are anything but “small talk”.

With minimal instrumentation behind him (percussion instruments and the odd piano), this debut album is recorded live, mostly spoken poetry (a big word for GSH’s prose) and features some all-time classics like the Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Whitey On The Moon and more, which does make this album an essential listen. However there are some tracks that are limit politically-correct nowadays in terms other than the CRM and the racial context, like the “Faggots” and other stuff in the genre. GSH also sings in few tracks, and later on will develop some real soul singer qualities, but that was never GSH’s main goal.

Quite an entertaining and educative listen to the open-minded people of all colors. A must-hear, at least once.

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