Pieces of a Man

Gil Scott-Heron speaks with precision here, but he also sings. Pieces of a Man moves between those activities, with Brian Jackson’s keyboards and an ensemble supplying more than a neutral backing. The famous opener sets one tone. It does not tell us everything about the ten original tracks still to come.

Following Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, the 1971 album expanded the setting to a band. Producer Bob Thiele brought together musicians including Ron Carter, Bernard Purdie, Hubert Laws and Burt Jones, with Johnny Pate also helping the session. Jackson was a composing partner as well as a keyboard player. The attractive personnel list matters less than what the musicians allow a phrase to become when it takes melodic shape.

After the declaration

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised gives way to Save the Children and Lady Day and John Coltrane. Their melodies establish that this will not be an album of identical addresses. Home Is Where the Hatred Is adds another perspective. Social observation can concern the scale of an individual predicament, rather than only a voice directed towards an imagined crowd. The variety is built into the sequence from the beginning.

Writing belongs to the arrangement

The first four songs credit Scott-Heron alone; the remaining seven original compositions credit him with Jackson. This distinction prevents the pianist from disappearing behind the singer’s reputation. Listen to a sentence as something carried by a melody and changing harmony, not merely printed language with decoration attached. An instrumental contribution may shape the time an observation occupies and the weight it acquires.

A different measure at the end

The original second side starts with the title song and ends with The Prisoner, which runs about nine minutes and twenty-six seconds in this delivery. That extended ending requires a different attention from the compact opening. Stop there on a first pass. The three subsequent Black & Blues recordings belong to an archival supplement from the college group, not the original conclusion. Preserving that boundary reveals an album able to contain compressed speech, lyrical release and prolonged tension without reducing them to a single manner of expression.