ALBUM (1974)

Winter in America
Gil Scott-Heron
Strata-East

Gil Scott-Heron became a counter-cultural sensation with his damning attack on American society in the 1970 track The Revolution Will Not be Televised. The commercial success of Winter in America four years later took that polemic global.

Scott-Heron, with long-time writing and performing partner Brian Jackson, scored his first worldwide hit with the single The Bottle lifted from the album, a collection of pointed critiques of American life and history that reinforced the poet-musician's reputation as a major force in both politics and the arts.

The album, the pair's only one for jazz imprint Strata-East records, marked a stylistic watershed. Typified by The Bottle, it had a more commercial, soulful sound that contrasted with the often unyielding tone of their earlier songs and Scott-Heron's spoken-word raps.

Where earlier albums, such as Pieces of a Man, are punctuated by minimal jazz backing rhythms, Winter in America is more orchestrated, lush and smooth, finding influence in the emerging funk and disco stirrings of black American music of the early 1970s.

With the possible exception of the hit single, the album's tracks also mark a shift in Scott-Heron's lyricism, away from didactic tours de force to a less abrasive, more considered, poetic style.