Here is an album that needs discovering. It's strong, deeply soulful and possessed of that rare and wonderful quality in this time of hollow, obligatory "relevance"–intelligence. Gil Scott-Heron's first album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, was released almost two years ago when its author/composer was 21. Like the Last Poets' work, Small Talk was predominantly conga-backed poetry but it lacked the energy and flash of the Poets, and after I heard "The Subject Was Faggots," I didn't play it again. (It's strange to me how blacks intelligent enough to talk about "oppression" can turn around and slap that same oppression on "faggots" and laugh about it–like the little kid who kicks a dog because he thinks he has nowhere else he can safely turn his anger.)

I would have forgotten Scott-Heron, his passed-on oppression and his weak poetry, were it not for three cuts on which he sang rather than read. His singing voice was firm and mellow, without any of the self-consciously hip "attitude" that affected his readings; and his songs had a strength that only intermittently sparked in his poems. Scott-Heron was clearly a better songwriter than poet and, in spite of a terribly ragged production, an interesting, even moving, singer.

Happily, with the exception of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," the best poem on Small Talk included here in a more fully orchestrated version, Pieces of a Man is an album of fine songs. Because most of the accompaniment by an excellent assemblage of musicians here calling themselves Pretty Purdie and the Playboys: (Purdie on drums; Ron Carter, an astounding bass man; Burt Jones, guitar, Hubert Laws, flute and sax, and Brian Jackson, Scott-Heron's collaborator, on piano) is in a jazz style, the songs have a loose, unanchored quality that sets them apart from both R&B and rock work. Scott-Heron sings straight-out, with an ache in his voice that conveys pain, bitterness and tenderness with equal grace and, in most cases, subtlety. Frequently the nature of the jazz backing is so free that the vocals take on an independent, almost a cappella feeling which Scott-Heron carries off surprisingly well.

But what is most surprising about the album, especially after an exposure to the awkwardly fashionable poses of his poetry, is Scott-Heron's assurance and directness as a songwriter. There are occasional lines that seem to have slipped out of youthful poetry into mature songs ("Why should I subscribe to this world's madness?") and the long final cut, "The Prisoner," tends to get bogged down in its own "heaviness." But generally the material is tough and real, "relevant" while avoiding, on the one hand, empty cliche and, on the other, fierce rhetoric, its own kind of cliche.

"Pieces of a Man," the album's best song, describes in several short, almost cinematic "scenes" a man's breakdown as witnessed by his son: "I saw him go to pieces." Scott-Heron sings with a measured sadness, as if stunned, and at the same time gets across the sense of hurt, anger and incomprehension in the "character" (if it is one) he's assumed. He sings: "I saw the thunder and heard the lightning/ and felt the burden of his shame/ and for some unknown reason/ he never turned my way."

Pieces of a Man has been out for some six months now, with little or no critical notice. But, apparently through word - of - mouth and some airplay on those rare progressive black FM stations, it has become one of the label's best selling albums. It deserves to be. It may not be easy to find, but it's an involving, important album (especially so because of its successful and accessible use of jazz) and it's worth looking for. (RS 113)

VINCE ALETTI