3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
excellent, September 13, 2009
This review is from: Free Will (Audio CD)
Generalizing, you could divide 1970s Gil Scott Heron in two parts--the early 70s, where he used jazz pros like Ron Carter and Bernard Purdie, and his work with the Midnight Band, an out and out funk unit.
Free Will represents the first catagory, and features blues, flute driven numbers, and the politically charged bongo-poetry-jazz that rightly put Heron on FM radio.
This music was perfect for its era. The flute work in particualr reminds me of Quincy Jones or Lalo Shfrin's soundtrack work of the period.
Subjectively. I perfer the streemlined punch of the Midnight Band, which used a funk rock frame as a context for jazz as opposed to the out and out jazz here. But this is quality work and would be a fine place to start exploring this underrated artist who is not remembered often enough.
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