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I heard, probably about 6 or 7 years ago, that GSH was up in court for, IIRC, possession (of, i believe, cocaine) with intent to supply, and was likely to be sentenced to about 12 years, and since that was the last thing i heard about him, i had assumed he had been in prison since then TBH... so presumably that didn't happen, or did he get out, and then get arrested again?
I do remember being shocked that one of the pioneers of "conscious" music could get "caught up" like that, and if i was more into hero-worship, or knew more about him/the case, would probably have tried to "prove" that he was framed or something, but that was when i had a much more fundamentalist view about the whole "drug culture" than i do now...
As to his music, i've only got one compilation (called "Ghetto Style"), but, from that, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", "Home Is Where The Hatred Is" (also versioned by Esther Phillips), "Lady Day And John Coltrane", "I Think I'll Call It Morning" and "Get Out Of The Ghetto Blues" are undisputable all time classics, and there are probably others on there i can't recall the titles of right now...
I believe he was inspired to record music by seeing The Last Poets at a university campus gig, but only some of his stuff ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" exemplifying it) is in the proto-hip-hop-jazz-poetry style invented by them - he was also amazingly good at very mellow, jazzy soul (in a similar style to, say, Marvin Gaye's or Stevie Wonder's "jazzy"/"conscious" periods) - he kind of stands in that (very fertile) ground somewhere between the categories of jazz, funk, soul and blues...
Definitely one of the key figures (alongside Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, Marvin, Stevie, The Last Poets and others) in the early 70s African-American political/spiritual/experimental music explosion... |
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