Who’s In a Name (Plus or Minus)-15/04/09

Once in a while someone asks me about my name. It is not questioned as frequently nowadays though that doesn’t mean it is better understood. Only that the hyphenated connection is more commonly applied, especially among entertainers, and therefore more readily accepted.

     There were more questions about how the name came to be spelled with the hyphen in the early half of the seventies when I began recording and publishing. I would, of course, go through the process of describing how it came about; that my mother’s maiden name was my middle name and that the hyphen was a symbol of the joining of two families, The Scotts and The Herons.

     It was not and still is not an American tradition and that may not be why other Americans have done it. They may just think that it’s cool. I admit to feeling as though it was distinguished, artistic in a way, and initially I only used it to autograph my poems or songs. I went through grammar school and high school as simply Gilbert Heron or Gilbert S. Heron, eventually Gil Heron before  I determined that I preferred the lower case spelling and that the Scotts really were my primary family connect. I have signed things since 1967 or ’68 as ‘gil scott-heron’.

     It would be unreasonable to think I latched on to this description of myself as properly accurate, beyond objection, without investigation. I do little in the realm of automatic acceptance, however, but as my story unfolds you will see revealed my total involvement and credits for my successful evolution to The Scotts. Because that is who I am and what I am. I was identified and respected in Jackson as a Scott: ‘Bob Scott’s boy’. I was identified as though The Herons did not exist.

     My mother and father separated when I was one and a half years old. My father had decided to take an opportunity to do what I believe he always wanted to do: play football. Soccer. At the highest level. Against the best players. On one of the best teams. Celtic. In Scotland. It was, for him, the chance of a lifetime; something that has been beyond the reach and outside of the dreams of Blacks. To play with this team was a Jackie Robinson invitation for him. It was an opportunity to see who he was and what he was in the game with the best; to avoid sliding through fits of old age and animosity and spasms of ‘I coulda been a contender’ that no-one believes. It can even make you doubt yourself. What you knew. What you would have sworn to if anyone was willing to listen.

     I was and am a Scott-Heron. I was and am ‘Bob Scott’s boy’. My grandmother taught me ‘what her husband taught her’. But I am also the son of Gil Heron. No doubt. Placing me along the lines of those who preceded me was easy enough, but tracing the facets of who and what was responsible for which of my assets and debits were inherited from which direction was more difficult. Because the subjects were not available to testify and be observed and the witnesses at hand were all prejudiced either for or against.

     So, as a spindly legged youngster I made my faults and factors all mine. I lived in a solid, single storey brick square that sat comfortably like a Buddha watching the traffic creep past on Cumberland Street.

     The ‘Good man, Bob Scott’ folks were in Jackson. In South Jackson. That’s where all the Black folks lived. And they were liable to turn up anywhere I made an appearance. Suddenly. A substantial percentage of the community members were also from that generation. It seemed that the numbers were split between folks who were easing towards senior citizenry and those of high school age or less. The hole was in the middle, people who were my mother’s age. Those were the folks who had left Jackson and Tennessee for factory work and urban life in the north and further west: St. Louis and Memphis and Chicago. Somehow their Children, like me, all ended up in Jackson with their grandparents, aunts and uncles.

     I didn’t mind being connected to Bob Scott. I just didn’t know him. Bob Scott died the year before I was born. Under consideration I decided that most things that were important had happened just before I was born. My grandfather. My father. The Second World War. Jackie Robinson. The things that were important to the people in church or on the front porch at night. They had gotten all of their living done and accomplishments were strung out behind them like pearls on a leash. Lazy evening conversations would allow us all to take figurative walks through the gardens where those highlights of their lives had been planted.

     It was probably there that I decided I got my love for books from my mother the librarian, and my obsession about sports and games from my father. I grabbed that split of my gifts from my parents. And I held onto it until I heard about my grandfather’s pitching arm and heard my father’s poetry.