The full title is A New Black Poet - Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. Gil Scott-Heron was twenty-one and had published a novel and a book of poems with the same name. Bob Thiele, who was filling the early Flying Dutchman catalogue with spoken word (Stanley Crouch, H. Rap Brown, Pete Hamill, Angela Davis), recorded him reading in front of a small audience with three percussionists: Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders on congas, David Barnes on percussion and voice. Brian Jackson, later the other half of the partnership, plays on a couple of pieces.

Fourteen tracks, forty-four minutes. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in its first form, over hand drums, before the band version of the following year. Whitey on the Moon. Evolution (And Flashback). The title piece, a sketch of Harlem street talk. The subjects are television, consumerism, would-be revolutionaries, and white middle-class ignorance of the inner city, which is how the record's own notes describe it. Scott-Heron's liner notes list his influences: Richie Havens, Coltrane, Otis Redding, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Nina Simone.

Record Collector sums it up as Gil, three percussionists, no prisoners. Uncut hears the Last Poets in the percussion. AllMusic gives it four and a half stars. It sold well enough for Thiele to fund the band on Pieces of a Man.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's Flying Dutchman series.