“People Get Ready”:
Rising from the infamous Cabrini-Green projects, where he taught himself to play piano and guitar (in the atypical key of F sharp), Curtis Mayfield began performing gospel and doo-wop on the street as a child. This ad-hoc practice soon coalesced into a group, first called The Roosters and eventually known as The Impressions. Their first hit “For Your Precious Love” (#3 R&B, #11 Pop), launched them nationally, although the stresses caused lead singer Jerry Butler to leave the group in 1958. Curtis Mayfield saw an opening, picked up his pen and stepped to the microphone. 1962’s “Gypsy Woman” (#2 R&B), featuring an early Mayfield lead, kept the group alive in the limbo that followed Butler’s departure, and “It’s Alright” (#1 R&B, #4 Pop) marked the beginnings of the lush sound for which they would become renowned, built of Mayfield’s quicksilver guitar and producer Johnny Pate’s free-floating string and brass arrangements.
The Impressions. Left to Right: Fred Cash, Sam Gooden, Curtis Mayfield.
“Keep On Pushing”:
But things were happening, and Mayfield couldn’t help but notice. Soon his songs began to soundtrack the Civil Rights movement. Songs like “We’re A Winner”(#1 R&B #14 Pop), “Keep On Pushing” (#1 R&B, #10 Pop) and “People Get Ready” (#3 R&B, #14 Pop) pulsated beneath and wafted above protest marches, freedom rides, and the merciless, state-sanctioned predators who dogged them at every turn.
But the dream dragged on and equality was still a chimera in Black America. As the sixties sputtered to their pathetic close, cynicism swallowed optimism whole and a new darkness gripped the charts as the seventies loomed and soul music began to transform into funk. Mayfield took his leave of The Impressions in 1970, two years after forming his own record company, Curtom.
His solo career was, at its outset, a sustained rush of commercial and critical successes. Each album built upon the last- and then came Superfly. Despite its Technicolor title track (#5 R&B, #8 Pop) and the moral ambiguities of its namesake film, Superfly was an unrelenting portrait of the rot stretching its hands through the gutters and ghettos of America’s cities. It recognized no comfort or hope. It was a massive hit, topping the album charts for four weeks and spawning two Gold singles. One of the rare soundtrack albums to outgross its parent film, its dark, ornate funk the blueprint for legions of imitators over the next decade. It launched Mayfield into the upper echelons of his industry and set the bar impossibly high.
“Superfly”:
In the years that followed, Mayfield would become a victim of his own success, spreading himself too thin, writing and producing for all of Curtom’s acts, raising a young family, and trying to keep his own career viable. It was a struggle for him, as we will see, beginning with his first post-Superfly release, 1973’s Back To The World.