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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.”
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.”
