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| Legend. |
This past week, I tried to get past the only Curtis Mayfield album most people know, 1972’s Super Fly. I could only go so far. The man was crazy prolific, certainly more than I knew.
A Very Short History
Mayfield was born in Chicago in 1942. Because his father left when he was young, he was raised by his mother and his grandmother and very much in the church and the church’s choir. The family moved to Chicago’s North Side and he spent his teen years at the (in)famous Cabrini-Green housing project. Mayfield did not, however, spend much of his teens in high school.
His first step toward his separate musical life came when he found his first guitar at age 7 or 8 (or 10). With Muddy Waters and Andres Segovia for models, he taught himself to play and embraced the instrument to the point of sleeping with it and later saying “my guitar is another me.” He formed his first singing groups in the mid-1960s with his friend Jerry Butler. With Arthur and Richard Brooks in the mix, they performed as the Roosters; when Sam Gooden came on board, they became The Impressions. Mayfield wrote and arranged songs before and after the switch.
A lot of The Impressions music passed through Mayfield’s hands and mind (though not their first hit, “For Your Precious Love”), and he helped pioneer Chicago’s response to Detroit’s Motown, a mix of soul, R&B, and gospel. With The Impressions as his megaphone, Mayfield wrote what some people called the soundtrack of the Civil Rights movement, with anthems like “Keep on Pushing,” “We’re a Winner,” and probably the most famous number “People Get Ready” (which, for the record, was the first song that featured Mayfield’s guitar work). He eventually took his distinct singing voice to lead vocals for the group and they churned out hit after hit after hit, through the 1960s, including five in the Top 20 in the same year the Beatles came to America. And now the story flips:
“Mayfield had written much of the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, but by the end of the decade, he was a pioneering voice in the black pride movement along with James Brown and Sly Stone.”
Mayfield went solo in 1970 with the album Curtis!, which did well both critically and commercially. Super Fly came two years later and, along with Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, it kicked off soul’s socially-conscious era. The entire “Super Fly moment” desires a sentence because Mayfield originally didn’t want to do it; he objected to what he read as the glorification of the social problems he grew up around and worked to escape - until, that is, he figured out how to subvert the glorification in songs like “Freddie’s Dead” and “Pusherman.”
The transition didn’t do any harm: Super Fly topped the charts, sold 12 million copies (it out-sold the movie by a fair patch), and both “Freddie’s Dead” and the single, “Super Fly” went gold. When Rolling Stone sat down to do such things, they put Mayfield’s work in all kinds of all-time lists: “People Get Ready” made No. 24 of their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list (and No. 20 on the Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time); Super Fly came in at No. 74 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Grammys handed him a Legend Award in 1994, then a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.
Something else Mayfield pioneered: the role of black musical entrepreneur. From Mayfield’s official online bio:
“The line runs from Mayfield to Jay Z., Kanye West, Dr. Dre, P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, etc. Mayfield had showed that successful Black Capitalism was possible, perhaps necessary.”
After dicking around on a couple minor labels in the mid-1960s, he founded Curtom Records with a partner (manager Eddie Thomas) in 1968. This involved pushing out long-time friend, Jerry Butler, but Mayfield saw the need to have control over his music and copyrights (he also set up his own publishing). When Butler asked if he’d done anything wrong, Mayfield responded: “You didn’t do anything. I just want to own as much of me as possible.” Curtom became a force in Chicago’s soul music scene, putting out artists like Leroy Hutson, the Five Stairsteps (profiled here), the Staples Singers, Mavis Staples, Linda Clifford, Natural Four, The Notations and Baby Huey and the Babysitters. Gene Chandler and Major Lance. The success of Super Fly also proved Mayfield could score a movie soundtrack, which he did for several movies during the mid-1970s, including two movies of the comedy/action trilogy featuring Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby (1975’s Let’s Do It Again and 1977’s A Piece of the Action; Mayfield’s music didn’t appear in Uptown Saturday Night (1974)).
The story of Mayfield’s life has a sad, but appropriate coda: lighting equipment on a stage fell on him in 1990, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down to the end of his life. And yet he somehow managed to keep composing, and even singing new material: When Mayfield recorded his final album - 1996’s New World Order - he came up with a remarkable work-around:
“He lies on his back in the recording studio, allowing gravity to assist his diaphragm and his breathing, recording one line of the lyric at a time, but still singing and still composing.”
That’s Curtis Mayfield’s (fucking) incredible career in a snapshot. Even after skipping Super Fly (which I know well enough), I could only wade up to my knees in his catalog. Despite…just all of that, he remained a modest man. When people in the Civil Rights and Black Power movement called him things like “prophet” and “The Preacher,” he talked them down and mostly celebrated that he had his music to say what he felt like he needed to. He picked up another nickname in his career, one I didn’t see him either down-pedal or disown: “The Gentle Genius.”
Some Songs
As noted above, I only listened to a few of Mayfield’s solo albums this past week. Listing them by album:
Curtis!: “Move on Up,” “Readings in Astrology,” “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We’re All Going" (was the title track for The Deuce)
Roots (1971): “We Got to Have Peace”
Back to the World (1973): “Can’t Say Nothin’” and “Right on For Darkness”
Sweet Exorcist (1974): “Sweet Exorcist” and “Ain’t Got Time”
That’s it. Till the next one.
A Very Short History
Mayfield was born in Chicago in 1942. Because his father left when he was young, he was raised by his mother and his grandmother and very much in the church and the church’s choir. The family moved to Chicago’s North Side and he spent his teen years at the (in)famous Cabrini-Green housing project. Mayfield did not, however, spend much of his teens in high school.
His first step toward his separate musical life came when he found his first guitar at age 7 or 8 (or 10). With Muddy Waters and Andres Segovia for models, he taught himself to play and embraced the instrument to the point of sleeping with it and later saying “my guitar is another me.” He formed his first singing groups in the mid-1960s with his friend Jerry Butler. With Arthur and Richard Brooks in the mix, they performed as the Roosters; when Sam Gooden came on board, they became The Impressions. Mayfield wrote and arranged songs before and after the switch.
A lot of The Impressions music passed through Mayfield’s hands and mind (though not their first hit, “For Your Precious Love”), and he helped pioneer Chicago’s response to Detroit’s Motown, a mix of soul, R&B, and gospel. With The Impressions as his megaphone, Mayfield wrote what some people called the soundtrack of the Civil Rights movement, with anthems like “Keep on Pushing,” “We’re a Winner,” and probably the most famous number “People Get Ready” (which, for the record, was the first song that featured Mayfield’s guitar work). He eventually took his distinct singing voice to lead vocals for the group and they churned out hit after hit after hit, through the 1960s, including five in the Top 20 in the same year the Beatles came to America. And now the story flips:
“Mayfield had written much of the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, but by the end of the decade, he was a pioneering voice in the black pride movement along with James Brown and Sly Stone.”
Mayfield went solo in 1970 with the album Curtis!, which did well both critically and commercially. Super Fly came two years later and, along with Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, it kicked off soul’s socially-conscious era. The entire “Super Fly moment” desires a sentence because Mayfield originally didn’t want to do it; he objected to what he read as the glorification of the social problems he grew up around and worked to escape - until, that is, he figured out how to subvert the glorification in songs like “Freddie’s Dead” and “Pusherman.”
The transition didn’t do any harm: Super Fly topped the charts, sold 12 million copies (it out-sold the movie by a fair patch), and both “Freddie’s Dead” and the single, “Super Fly” went gold. When Rolling Stone sat down to do such things, they put Mayfield’s work in all kinds of all-time lists: “People Get Ready” made No. 24 of their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list (and No. 20 on the Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time); Super Fly came in at No. 74 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Grammys handed him a Legend Award in 1994, then a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.
Something else Mayfield pioneered: the role of black musical entrepreneur. From Mayfield’s official online bio:
“The line runs from Mayfield to Jay Z., Kanye West, Dr. Dre, P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, etc. Mayfield had showed that successful Black Capitalism was possible, perhaps necessary.”
After dicking around on a couple minor labels in the mid-1960s, he founded Curtom Records with a partner (manager Eddie Thomas) in 1968. This involved pushing out long-time friend, Jerry Butler, but Mayfield saw the need to have control over his music and copyrights (he also set up his own publishing). When Butler asked if he’d done anything wrong, Mayfield responded: “You didn’t do anything. I just want to own as much of me as possible.” Curtom became a force in Chicago’s soul music scene, putting out artists like Leroy Hutson, the Five Stairsteps (profiled here), the Staples Singers, Mavis Staples, Linda Clifford, Natural Four, The Notations and Baby Huey and the Babysitters. Gene Chandler and Major Lance. The success of Super Fly also proved Mayfield could score a movie soundtrack, which he did for several movies during the mid-1970s, including two movies of the comedy/action trilogy featuring Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby (1975’s Let’s Do It Again and 1977’s A Piece of the Action; Mayfield’s music didn’t appear in Uptown Saturday Night (1974)).
The story of Mayfield’s life has a sad, but appropriate coda: lighting equipment on a stage fell on him in 1990, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down to the end of his life. And yet he somehow managed to keep composing, and even singing new material: When Mayfield recorded his final album - 1996’s New World Order - he came up with a remarkable work-around:
“He lies on his back in the recording studio, allowing gravity to assist his diaphragm and his breathing, recording one line of the lyric at a time, but still singing and still composing.”
That’s Curtis Mayfield’s (fucking) incredible career in a snapshot. Even after skipping Super Fly (which I know well enough), I could only wade up to my knees in his catalog. Despite…just all of that, he remained a modest man. When people in the Civil Rights and Black Power movement called him things like “prophet” and “The Preacher,” he talked them down and mostly celebrated that he had his music to say what he felt like he needed to. He picked up another nickname in his career, one I didn’t see him either down-pedal or disown: “The Gentle Genius.”
Some Songs
As noted above, I only listened to a few of Mayfield’s solo albums this past week. Listing them by album:
Curtis!: “Move on Up,” “Readings in Astrology,” “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We’re All Going" (was the title track for The Deuce)
Roots (1971): “We Got to Have Peace”
Back to the World (1973): “Can’t Say Nothin’” and “Right on For Darkness”
Sweet Exorcist (1974): “Sweet Exorcist” and “Ain’t Got Time”
That’s it. Till the next one.
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