Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson ~ The Bottle 1974 Jazz Funk Purrfection Version

This one has been on my mind for so long, I just had to put it out tonight. I hope it helps cool your hot summer night. Oh, and you are over the mountain now, its all downhill to the weekend!

Gil Scott-Heron was an astute and aware poet and his presentation of the real world problems through his lyrics of his songs, none is more effective than this original rendition of "The Bottle". It's a pretty deceptively upbeat song about peoples' battles with the bottle in a street way of telling stories but it became an instant classic.

Gil was born April 1, 1949 in Chicago to opera singing mother Bobbie Scott and Jamaican soccer player Gil Heron. They broke up while Gil was still a child and he was sent to live with his grandmother.

At the age of 12, his grandma died and his mother brought him to The Bronx to attend school. He applied to Fieldston School, a prestigious institution after the head of the English Department read his writings and agreed to enroll him and he won a full scholarship.

He attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania because one of his literary influences was poet/social activist Langston Hughes. That is where he met lifelong friend Brian Jackson and they formed the band Black and Blue. He then wrote two novels, The Vulture and The Nigger Factory during a two year sabbatical and became involved with the Black Arts Movement which had been created to help build black pride through the arts.

He returned to New York and received an MA in creative writing in 1972 and became a lecturer at the University of DC while working on his music career. His first album was issued in 1970 and dealt with themes that deeply affected him about the life black people lived and what they endured due to their social standing in a predominantly white America.

In 1974 he collaborated with Brian Jackson on Winter In America, with the centerpiece song, "The Bottle" which examined the effect of alcoholism. That song was instantly regarded as their finest moment and it is not hard to understand why. The lively Caribbean beat belies the dark story of living in the ghetto and being affected by alcoholism. It did not chart on the Hot100 bit did make it to #15 on the R&B survey. A live version issued in 1976 drew even more attention to the original and it has become an important entry in the pantheon of Jazz Funk.

The inspiration for "The Bottle" came from his watching men line up every day in front of the local liquor store, bringing back their empty bottles to get a discount on the next purchase. He talked to a few of them included an ex-physician who had been arrested for abortions on young girls and an ex-air traffic controller in the military who sent two jets crashing into a mountain who left his job that day and never returned. The despairing social commentary he infused in this music helped to establish him as the poet for all time.

Scott-Heron was dropped by his label in 1985 so he quit recording and began to tour. He developed a drug addiction and began run ins with the law, spending several years in prison starting in 2001. Released on parole, he fell back into his habit was once again imprisoned in 2003. Three years later he was taken into custody for violating his plea deal on a drug possession charge and was finally paroled in 2007, two years before his original sentence of 2009.

He began recording again and released two albums, the second in 2011. On May 27, 2011 Scott-Heron died. IN response to his death, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Eminem and Usher issued statements that Scott-Heron was and is a very important and inspiring poet in the world. At his wake, Kanye West performed "Who Will Survive In America" that featured a spoken word passage by Scott-Heron. His music has been heavily sampled by the hip hop nation, with good reason, the man's heart was in the right place b. He has been described as the godfather of rap and the black Bob Dylan.