Happy 50th Anniversary to Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson’s Winter in America, originally released in May 1974.
Things could be pretty grim in the United States in the mid-1970s. The positivity that had been a fixture of the late 1960s had soured into something acrimonious and toxic. A literal crook of a President, who had been reelected in a landslide, was embroiled in a scandal that would eventually sink him. Thousands of soldiers who had served in a failed war effort in Vietnam were coming home, many of whom were haunted by the things they’d experienced and wracked with crippling drug addictions.
What’s more, many of the promising leaders in the Black community were being cut down in the prime and often in their youth. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, two of the most charismatic and dynamic leaders ever, were both assassinated. Meanwhile, the Black Panthers found their ranks decimated, often as the result of coordinated efforts by various law enforcement agencies (local, state, and federal) to undermine their efforts to combat this country’s racist power structure.
Gil Scott-Heron bore witness to all of this and recorded Winter in America, released 50 years ago. He believed the country was in the midst of a recognizable decline and set out to document the psychological effects that it had on the psyche.
For the first time, long time musical collaborator Brian Jackson received co-billing on the album. The pianist Jackson had recorded with Scott-Heron for much of his career, but was listed as a session musician in the liner notes of their previous albums. On Winter in America, he shares top billing credit as a full partner. This is appropriate, since he contributes to much of the long-player’s success.
Though some have called Winter in America one of the greatest political albums ever recorded, precious little of it concerns actual politics. Scott-Heron had never been particularly shy about expressing his anger through his compositions, but it’s noteworthy that, again, Winter in America isn’t a particularly angry album. Instead, a sense of sadness permeates much of Winter in America. The project embodies the feelings of outright hopelessness that gripped the Black population of the United States during this particular era.
And yet, even though much of Winter in America is a reaction to the times, five decades later, much of it feels timeless. The United States is in the throes of late stage capitalism and bitterly divided along lines of ideology, race, religion and creed, as some of the most deplorable people on the planet seem to carry out horrible deeds with impunity. In an interview with Austrailianjazz.net back in 2018, Jackson lamented, “I hate that [the album] is still so goddamned relevant.” Six years after that interview, still much of Winter in America’s content is sadly just as applicable to our current reality.
Listen to the Album (Preview):
Winter in America very much places the spotlight on Scott-Heron and Jackson. Most of the songs put Scott-Heron’s vocals and Jackson’s piano wizardry (as well as his flute skills) in the forefront, as they recorded the album in a studio reportedly so small that it could only fit one of them at a time. The legend goes that bassist Danny Bowens and drummer Bob Adams didn’t record their contributions until the final of day of the week-long recording sessions. Their presence can be felt on the album’s tracks, but they are suitably subtle, as Scott-Heron and Jackson aim for a sparse, stripped-down sound. These aesthetics add to the album’s melancholy.
Scott-Heron was a gifted spoken word artist, best known for crafting incisive and acerbic pieces like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “Whitey On the Moon.” What is often lost is how great of a singer he was. He uses his melodious baritone vocals throughout Winter in America, conveying sorrow that was intrinsic to the times, as well as fleeting bits of buoyancy.
Scott-Heron opens Winter in America with “Peace Go With You, Brother (As-Salaam-Alaikum),” functioning as a theme song of sorts for the mid-1970s. His voice and lyrics throb with bitterness and disillusionment, as he considers the deepening rifts within the Black community, remarking how he “isn’t so proud anymore” and “recognition don't come cheap anymore.” Regardless, he holds out hope that unity will prevail and those who were once so close can find a way to mend fences, even as he sees a dire future ahead. “All of your children and all of my children are gonna have to pay for our mistakes someday,” he intones. “Yes, and until then may peace guide your way.”
“Rivers of My Fathers” is Winter in America’s grandest undertaking, an eight-and-a-half minute epic that centers on Scott-Heron and Jackson’s virtuosity in their respective fields. After a lengthy piano solo by Jackson, Scott-Heron seeks solace from the chaos of the time, looking to disengage from “this confusion” and find some modicum of peace by locating “home,” which he implies is Africa. “Let me lay down by a stream,” he sings. “And let me be miles from everything.”
Occasionally Scott-Heron and Jackson forgo the sparseness and bring the bass and drums to the forefront along with their vocals and piano. They do so on “The Bottle,” one of Scott-Heron’s best known and most successful songs. The song was based on Scott-Heron and Jackson’s interactions with a group of alcoholics who congregated outside of a liquor store near where the pair lived. The song attempts to paint three-dimensional portraits of those suffering from substance abuse, rather than resigning them to the status of anonymous winos.
“Back Home” is the album’s most upbeat song. Apparently inspired by a trip to Tennessee, where Scott-Heron spent a good portion of his childhood, he yearns to “get back and see my people” and enjoy “collard greens and cornbread on my Sunday dinner” with his family, rather than being enveloped in city life where he’s frequently “lost and searching for one warm friendly smile.”
Scott-Heron and Jackson make some room for optimism and love on Winter in America. “Song for Bobby Smith” is inspired by the close-to-four-year old “young warrior” of the song’s title, who both Scott-Heron and Jackson had befriended while recording Winter in America. Accompanied by just Jackson on the keyboard, Scott-Heron sings in hushed tones about self-improvement and the importance of maintaining a connection with your community.
“Your Daddy Loves You” is Scott-Heron’s heartfelt message to his daughter. He sings from the perspective of watching his baby girl sleep, explaining to her that while he and her mother have had their issues, their love for her has motivated them to work through their problems. Scott-Heron would later record another version of the song six years later on Real Eyes (1980). The latter recording is overly slick and lush, and lacks the simplicity of execution that Scott-Heron and Jackson achieve on Winter in America.
Scott-Heron doesn’t fully vent his outright bile until “H2Ogate Blues,” the albums’ closing piece and oddity. For one, it’s the only spoken word piece on Winter in America, an expanded version of a poem that he’d regularly open his shows with. For another, it’s played with a straight blues backdrop and is recorded to sound as if Scott-Heron is performing it in smoky, gritty late night venue. And for yet another, it’s the only song where the lyrics are specifically of a time, as they center around the Watergate Scandal that would eventually sink Richard Nixon’s presidency.
Scott-Heron delivers the poem in one take, seemingly off the top of his head, making mistakes and correcting them as he goes along. The piece center’s on Heron’s contempt for Nixon and his cohorts, disgust for the Vietnam War effort, as well as a deep distrust for the United States government and corporations. Scott-Heron is both incisive and hilarious. He berates former Vice President Spiro Agnew a.k.a. “Spearhead X” and Nixon, dubbed both “King Richard” and the “main mindless, megalomanic Ahab,” as well as mocking Nixon’s rogue’s gallery of flunkies ad enablers.
Scott-Heron populates the piece with references to other various politicians and personalities of the early to mid-1970s. He frequently blasts Frank Rizzo, police chief turned Mayor of Philadelphia, known for his contentious relationship with the city’s Black population (“the high school graduate … whose ignorance Is surpassed only by those who voted for him”) and name drops Congressman Hale Boggs, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances while campaigning in Alaska.
Another legend of the album’s creation goes that “H20gate Blues” was almost left off Winter in America because Scott-Heron feared the song would go over listeners’ heads, and that drummer Adams had to talk him into including it. It’s a good thing that Adams was so persuasive, because even with references to long-forgotten deputy directors of the FBI and former Governors of Georgia, it’s remarkable how much of “H20gate Blues” is still applicable half a century later.
I know that I frequently quoted the piece’s opening line, “I’m sorry, the government that you have elected is inoperative” often between 2016 and 2020. Scott-Heron’s sentiments that the government has been corrupted by the “economics of war” and increased corporatization are evergreen, as are his condemnations of this country’s complicity in destabilizing democratically elected government who don’t agree with us. When he calls the United States the “land of a thousand disguises, sneaks up on you but rarely surprises” and ponders “How long will the citizens sit and wait? It's looking like Europe in '38 / Did they move to stop Hitler before it was too late?”, it feels just as urgent as if it were recorded last week.
Sadly, Winter in America isn’t currently available on streaming services. In fact, it had been out of print for years, until this year’s Record Store Day held just a few weeks ago, when it was reissued on vinyl by Culture Factory USA, a boutique imprint that’s mission is “to identify long-cherished albums by both well-known and under-appreciated artists and make their legendary recordings sound and feel brand-new again.” Though audio refurbishment may sound nice, the contents of Winter in America feel as new as ever. Winter is often coming for this country, and Scott-Heron is the ideal poet to document its coldest days and nights.