Gil Scott-Heron / Brian Jackson – H2Ogate Blues (recorded October 15, 1973)
The final song recorded for Scott-Heron and Jackson's landmark Winter in America LP was this spoken word, truth-to-power masterpiece about Watergate.
View most updated version of this post on Substack.
On October 15, 1973, exactly fifty years ago, Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson finished recording their landmark Winter in America LP.
Initial sessions had begun the previous month, and ran from September 4-5, 1973. It was recorded at D&B Sound Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland, and released in May, 1974 on Strata-East Records. Winter in America was Scott-Heron’s first and only release for the independent label.
He had left his previous label Flying Dutchman after a dispute with owner and producer Bob Thiele. Scott-Heron claimed it was due to Thiele’s refusal to give his collaborator Brian Jackson co-billing on future albums, although some sources maintain financial issues were to blame.
One single was released from Winter in America, “The Bottle,” which today competes with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” as Scott-Heron’s best-known song. It hit #15 on the R&B charts, and helped the LP become Strata-East’s all time best-selling record, with over 300,000 copies sold in the United States.
The final track laid down on October 15 was the album's spoken word, truth-to-power masterpiece “H2Ogate Blues.” It originated as a monologue Scott-Heron used to open his concerts, and in the studio that day, drummer Bob Adams voiced his disappointment that it had not been recorded for the album. This was because, as Scott-Heron thought at the time, “Nobody outside of Washington seemed to know what the hell I was talking about. (Adams’) reply was that even if people didn’t understand the politics it’s still funny as hell.”
For the liner notes to the 1998 CD reissue of Winter in America, Scott-Heron went into detail about recording the track:
“So we sat up to do one take, a 'live ad-lib' to a blues backing ... and the poem was done with a few index cards with notes to be sure I got the references straight without stumbling. (I still stumbled anyway) After we got through it we listened to it play back with an open studio mike and became the audience ... The poem worked well. It felt like what the album had been missing. Not just the political aspect, but as Bob has said, for the laughs. The Watergate incident itself was not funny and neither were its broader implications, but as a release, a relief of tension of Winter in America it provided a perfect landing.”
Besides Scott-Heron and Jackson on keyboards and vocals, Winter in America also featured Adams on drums (traps) and Danny Bowens on bass. Jackson also played the flute, notably on “The Bottle.”
Another of the album’s highlights was its superb opening cut, “Peace Go With You, Brother (As-Salaam-Alaikum),” which Scott-Heron and Jackson co-wrote.
Further info:
“Cold Comfort: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson's Winter In America,” by Tristan Bath, The Quietus, November 26, 2014.
“Brian Jackson Reflects On Gil Scott-Heron, ‘The Bottle’ & Creating A Classic,” interview by Chris Williams, Okayplayer.com, 2017.
#soul #funk #GilScott-Heron #Brian Jackson #WinterInAmerica