Jazz journalist Andrew Gilbert provides some background on Dred Scott:
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13932120/alphabet-soup-spelled-out-jazz-and-hip-hop-fusion-in-the-90s

These two paragraphs from Andy’s article, about the formative early 1990s Bay Area years, say alot (although you should read the whole thing):

Vocalist Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers turned Café du Nord into a jump blues joint, while guitarist Charlie Hunter brought low-down funk to the Elbo Room. Pianist Graham Connah turned Bruno’s into a protean jazz workshop with an array of ensembles, while vocalist Paula West started her rise to national prominence. Drummer Josh Jones brought a vivifying jolt of Afro-Cuban beats to the Up & Down Club on Folsom Street, which became ground zero for many of the era’s most exciting acts.

Two 1995 compilation albums released by Mammoth Records, Up & Down Club Sessions Vol. 1 & 2, captured this creative frisson with tracks by Alphabet Soup, Charlie Hunter, Kenny Brooks, Will Bernard, Josh Jones, Scheherazade Stone’s Hueman Flavor and the Eddie Marshall Hip-Hop Jazz Band, a group led by the veteran jazz drummer who’d played in the influential fusion band the Fourth Way a quarter century earlier (and served as unofficial house drummer at the 1970s North Beach jazz mecca Keystone Korner). Several members of the San Francisco 49ers frequented the club, which cross-pollinated its audiences as well as its musicians.

In the ’90s, Dred, with Kenny Brooks and Jay Lane, co-founded Alphabet Soup, a ground-breaking hip-hop jazz group, turning the San Fran jazz scene on its head with their full-throttle performances.

Upon moving to NYC, the Dred Scott Trio wowed crowds at his almost decade-long, late-night residency at Rockwood Music Hall, where his original compositions earned a reputation for cheeky playfulness, using “an irreverent veneer to disguise old-fashioned jazz scholarship.” (EMUSIC)  

Dred has recorded 13 albums as a leader and has performed on over 50 others, notably with Anthony Braxton, Cecil McBee, Andrew Cyrille, Joe Morello, Charlie Hunter, Bob Mintzer, Dave Samuels, Don Byron, Paul McCandless and Marshall Crenshaw. He’s shared bills with  Zigaboo Modeliste, Steve Smith, Mike Clark, The Paul Dresher Ensemble, Pete Seager, Arlo Guthrie, Levon Helm, Norah Jones, Moby, Bob Weir, Joe Henderson, The Berkeley Symphony under Kent Nagano, Ricky Lee Jones, Dave Garibaldi, Larry Schneider, Nina Hagen, Peter Apfelbaum and Todd Clouser, and has been booked into the Newport, Monterey, Detroit, Fillmore and Saratoga jazz festivals and clubs across the country and around the world – Blue Note, Birdland, Smalls, Snug Harbor, The Green Mill, Duc Des Lombards, Yoshi’s, Blue Note Tokyo — and Bird & Beckett. You may have seen the documentary he scored, A Palace for the People, about the WPA project that created the Aquatic Bathhouse building at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco in the 1930s. The building is now a maritime museum where this one-hour doc plays daily.

Over the years, Dred has maintained a reputation on both coasts as an innovative and eclectic pianist and multi-instrumentalist, known for his stylistically reckless repertoire and a penchant for covering pop tunes. He’s been based in NYC for 23 years and is gradually cobbling together the remnants of his pre-Covid musical life. He was the house pianist at Del Posto for 8 years until Covid and some only-in-NY factors closed them down. His 2023 release, The Pacific Jazz Group, on Ropeadope Records, features Bay Area stars Eric Crystal, John Wiitala and Smith Dobson, digging into the west coast jazz sound that made up much of Pacific Jazz catalog. Cali Mambo, inspired by the George Shearing/Cal Tjader collaborations of the 1950s is in the pipeline.