David Adebonojo, who performs under the name of the slave who unsuccessfully sued to free himself and his family, is something of an institution in downtown Denver. Over the past five years, his bluesy acoustic covers of popular songs, including Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and Prince's "Purple Rain," have drawn a following among passers-by intrigued by the talent of a homeless musician.
But in the past four weeks, his audience has become international. YouTube clips of his performance have collected more than 500,000 clicks since early July.
The man who galvanized
Visit Reverb for additional photos and a recent video performance. (Photos by Evan Semon, Special to The Denver Post )his career is also a local fan: Denver musician and producer Tyler Ward, who first heard "this amazing voice" one evening after having dinner downtown.
Ward walked toward the singer and found a man whose appearance suggested a streetworn, dreadlocked version of actor Don Cheadle. Scott's forearms were raked with scars, muddled by tattoos and stubbled with knotted souvenirs of the untreated infections common among the chronically homeless.
But his eyes were clear and direct, and in his backpack was a copy of "Devils of Loudun," Aldous Huxley's nonfiction novel about demonic possession. Scott's voice was steady and powerful as he sang.
"I listened for 20 minutes and started talking to him," Ward says.
Scott gave him a precis of his recent life, hopping from one homeless shelter to another.
Ward was sold. He teamed up with Trey Noran, a minister who helps Denver's homeless through outreach group His Love Street, and arranged to record an extended-play disc of covers called "Live From the 16th Street Mall." Sales would go to His Love Street to help Scott and other homeless people. The videos went viral. To date, Scott's take on "Purple Rain" has earned a half-million views.
. The son of Nigerian-born pediatrician and author Festus Adebonojo and Episcopal priest Mary Adebonojo, Scott was born in San Francisco. He grew up in Philadelphia, spent a year or two at a boarding school in Nigeria and returned to the U.S. His cousin taught him to play the guitar.
"I sang for fun, but I didn't think I had a talent for music," he said.
He listened to music by Cab Calloway, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Scott Joplin "because the music I tend to listen to is out (for) at least 10 years."
After high school, Scott went to a community college near Sacramento, Calif., "the most boring place to live in California," he
Special to The Denver Post )said, "but ever since I'd moved back from Nigeria, I felt like a fish out of water anyway, like someone who wasn't American. Americans are, in a lot of ways, proud to be idiots."
To the dismay of his parents — his father graduated from Harvard; his mother from Yale — he studied automotive technology, thinking about becoming a mechanic.
At about the same time, between 1986 and 1989, Scott embraced the Grateful Dead. He joined the small legion of Deadheads following the band from concert to concert. When he recounts the 1980s, it's as "the year Jerry (Garcia) got sick," or "the year a bunch of shows got canceled."
After getting caught selling LSD at a Dead concert in Massachusetts, he served some prison time. That launched a cycle of using and selling drugs, getting arrested and serving time — something he describes as "catching a case."
He caught more cases in Florida, in Minnesota, in California and, starting in 1996, caught a half-dozen more cases in Colorado. Most were misdemeanors, but from 1998 to 2006, he served a prison term and then spent time in a halfway house, on drug-related felony charges.
"When I got out in 2006, I had a stack of music I'd written in prison but very little in the way of marketable skills," Scott said.
He moved to a unit in a run-down Aurora apartment building riddled with bedbugs but lost his room after falling behind in rent. He took his guitar to downtown Denver to busk on the 16th Street Mall. At night, he slept at homeless shelters or squatted in an abandoned building.
Scott became something of an institution on the downtown mall and beyond. The Sunday brunch crowd at Racine's, a short hike from downtown, knew his music and sometimes gave him money.
"Our guests seemed to really enjoy his music because he was so good," said Lee Goodfriend, one of Racine's owners. "And he was super-nice."
On good days, he brought in lots of cash. But on bad days, he'd earn "maybe a dollar, and then a string would break," or someone would steal his guitar.
"I've been through half a dozen guitars," Scott said.
"The last one was stolen. I got this one from a church outreach."
A breakthrough
Then Tyler Ward approached him in late June. Would Scott give him permission to make a video of a couple of performances and post them on Tyler's Internet music channel?
"I was like, yeah, yeah, that sounds really cool, but I don't even have an e-mail address," Scott said. He was surprised when Ward chased him down a few days later, recording equipment in tow.
Ward wasted no time in making an extended play recording of Scott covering "What's Going On" and "Purple Rain."
hen he posted the videos, Scott's bluesy, sorrowful take on Prince's song got more than 507,000 clicks and more than 1,000 purchases through iTunes. Reporters started calling. Ward asked Noran, of His Love Street, to shepherd Scott's media inquiries and help Scott with logistics.
"When I gave Dred the checks from iTunes, I was a little worried," Noran said, "but when I asked him about the checks two days later, he pulled them out of his pocket. Someone else would've cashed them and spent it."
They deposited the money in a new bank account. Scott found an apartment in Aurora where he's staying temporarily. Lannie Garrett, whose Lannie's Clocktower Cabaret is a venue for edgy, unconventional music, arranged for Scott to perform there Sept. 28.
Interviews and articles began popping up on local media. CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, wanted an interview. CNN called, too.
So did Prince's legal representatives, telling Ward to take down Scott's version of "Purple Rain." That stopped the iTunes checks but also frustrated Scott's online fan base.
"I'm crying you guys because I want to buy his album and help him but I can't," wrote fffunfarm on Ward's YouTube channel.
"Get him off the streets."
Disappointed by the injunction, Scott is philosophical.
"You have to play songs that got a lot of airplay so people will say, 'Oh, that's my favorite song' and give you money. But I have my own music. One of the depressing things about the 20th century is the mass media saying if you haven't heard something on the radio, then it's not worth listening to."
Garrett plans to give him a chance to prove the mass media wrong. She worries a little about how Scott will handle the barrage of attention.
Earlier this year, Ted Williams, another homeless man, found himself a national celebrity when a YouTube video called him the Man With The Golden Voice. Williams received offers of radio jobs but quit rehab and fell into obscurity.
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