Gil Scott-Heron News

The 67-year-old diva, who served as the leader of the Motown group The Supremes before striking gold on her own as a singer and actress, giggled at the notion of such an accolade while on hand to accept her trophy at Saturday's Grammy Special Merit Awards ceremony.

This is a sad book. And not just because Gil Scott-Heron - syncopated jazz-poet and political agitator, astute and empathetic chronicler of the African American experience, and, whether he liked it or not, godfather of rap - died in May at 62 after sacrificing the last years of his life to crack cocaine addiction.

The singer blazed a trail through music and pop culture that influenced artists of many genres and non-artists alike.

The late musician and writer Gil Scott-Heron will be remembered during the Grammys telecast this weekend.

Gil Scott-Heron was not the Godfather of Rap. But when he passed away last year at the age of 62, nearly every obituary honored him as such.

Gil Scott-Heron in Los Angeles, 1980: 'he mesmerises us with the rhythmic street poetry that earned him the reluctant soubriquet "godfather of rap"'. Photograph: Neal Preston/Corbis The title of this posthumously published memoir might seem to presage an elegiac farewell to the good times.

The late performer - one of the most influential artists of his generation - casts some light on his life, times and music.

Newt Gingrich, left, debates Mitt Romney during tonight's CNN debate at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fla.

This week: a memoir by the "godfather of hip-hop," a novel of a Parisian painter's lesbian affair, and the letters of Joseph Roth.

This past Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Santana trumpeter, Bill Ortiz, released Winter In America ; his latest solo effort.

The tribute used Gil's riff on "Inner City Blues" and lyrics from "I Think I'll Call It Morning." And she stopped there, that would have been aplenty, but being the bad somebody she be, Sandra contacted a slew of producers and musicians and got them involved in widely varying interpretations of her original tribute.