He was known as The Black Arrow for his style and speed, and cut a handsome figure in the drab industrial landscape of 1950s Glasgow. As a black man, he attracted attention. So did his clothes — zoot suits, trilby hats and yellow shoes. Gil Heron, Celtic’s first black player and one of the first in British football, revelled in his role as a dandy.

Heron died last week aged 87, but his connection with Scotland lives on with his son Gil Scott-Heron, the musician, writer and campaigner who is often credited as the father of modern hip-hop.

I went to the US earlier this year to meet Scott-Heron at his home in New York City. I was there to give him a gift — a recording of The Flight of the Heron, a tribute to his father’s days at Celtic by Michael Marra, one of Scotland’s best loved singer-songwriters.

“Never meet your heroes,” a friend advised me before my trip. “Some of my best friends are my heroes,” I replied, but I knew what he meant.

I had admired Scott-Heron since first seeing him play the Dundee Jazz Festival in the mid-1980s. His charisma and way with words and music struck me immediately. Scott-Heron’s work is politically conscious and emotionally literate — miles away from the bling and gun culture that characterises much of rap today.

He wrote about division in America, black history, and fatherhood, giving the world a legacy that includes B Movie, about Ronald Reagan, Winter in America, on Nixon, and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, one of the most sampled tracks ever.

Knocking on the door of his flat, just off the Harlem end of Broadway, I had all sorts of feelings. This man had changed thousands of lives. What stories lay behind the bashed, run-down door?

When he opened it, I knew everything would be alright. There he stood. The tall, slim man I remembered from years ago. The same hat, hair and beard, a little greyer. The same frame, a little thinner. And the same infectious, glorious smile.Though he looked well, the years have not been kind to him. He was plagued by drug abuse, and endured two stays in prison. He was dropped by his record label, Arista, in the 1980s, and had not recorded in more than a decade.

He led me down a narrow, long hall, and indicated we turn second right into his bedroom. This was his main place of work: disorganised and dishevelled, but somewhere he found sanctuary.

I perched on the side of his bed, taking in the state of the room, as he went off to get some drinks and the house cat, Paris, came in and checked me out.

There was a moment of anticipation as I handed him Marra’s track, which he immediately put on the home entertainment system. Marra’s evocative, soulful Scottish voice was suddenly in the room with us, singing the opening line, “When Duke was in the Lebanon”. I realised that I was at the scene of something profound. As the song reached its second verse, “From Jamaica to the Kingston Bridge”, I knew that The Flight of the Heron had touched Gil deeply. As the song closed, there was a moment of silence, and both of us were close to tears.

After a second or two, Scott-Heron began typing a short note of thanks to Marra for me to deliver. He said he would like to record a version of it on the new album he is working on. He explained that he was separated from his father from an early age — he was brought up by his maternal grand-mother in Tennessee — but knew well that the experience at Parkhead mattered greatly to him.

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