1 Gil Scott-Heron

Pieces Of A Man FLYING DUTCHMAN, 1971

You say: “Number 1 has to be Pieces Of A Man. One of the most important albums in the history of black American music.” Dean Rudland, via e-mail

In the same year that Marvin Gaye recorded What’s Going On and Sly & The Family Stone There’s A Riot Goin’ On, so Scott-Heron, just 22, delivered his masterpiece. His first with Jackson – who cowrites seven of the 11 tracks – it was recorded in New York’s RCA studios with an expert band featuring Hubert Laws, Ron Carter and Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie. Scott-Heron is vociferous throughout and the high points are many and still cut deep today, from Home Is Where The Hatred Is, one of the bleakest portrayals of ghetto living ever written, to the definitive take on The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, his searing condemnation of consumerist society that promises redemption in the post-uprising, and Lady Day And John Coltrane, a celebration of the restorative power of music, the light that never goes out.