Curtis Mayfield - A Profile

Curtis Lee Mayfield was born on June 3, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He most notably known for the soundtrack he wrote and performed for blaxploitation film 'Super Fly'. Although he never perhaps achieved the dizzying sales of the likes of Stevie Wonder or Marvin Gaye he was non the less one of Americas most influential soul, R&B, and funk singer, songwriter, and record producers of the late 60's and early 70's whose influence is still even felt today., and as if that isn't enough he was also a multi-instrumentalist who played the guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, and drums, the complete one man band.
Mayfield began singing at the tender age of seven, then began teaching himself to play guitar, lead his own gospel and soul group, the Alphatones, and began composing music and writing lyrics before he was even a teenager. In 1956, he moved with his family to the North Side of Chicago, where he met the singer Jerry Butler while performing in a church choir. Butler had his own soul band, called the Roosters, and convinced the 14-year-old Mayfield to join. Two years later, The Roosters, who now included Sam Gooden in their line up, became The Impressions, and they had a No. 11 hit with "For Your Precious Love". On the strength of this hit Butler decided to leave the group and go solo. He was replaced by Fred Cash, with Mayfield becoming the lead singer, as well as now frequently composing the songs, playing the guitar and producing the records as well. With Mayfield now at the helm the group brought its potent mixture of gospel, soul, and doo-wop to the fore with a total of 14 Top 10 recordings, including "Gypsy Woman" (superbly covered in 2007 by Junior Murvin) and "It's All Right". In 1964, with hit song "Keep on Pushing," Mayfield became one of the first R&B singer-songwriters to bring a racial and political consciousness to his music, and soon followed this with songs such as "People Get Ready", "I'm So Proud," "This is My Country" and "Check Out Your Mind". "Keep on Pushing" was even adopted as an anthem for Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. By the end of the decade he was a now a pioneering voice in the Black Pride Movement, along with the likes of James Brown and Sly Stone. Mayfield's "We're a Winner", became a Number 1 soul hit and even gained Billboard pop Top 20 success, and became the adopted anthem of the Black Power and Black Pride Movements when it was released in late 1967.
By the end of the 60's Mayfield had become a song writing powerhouse in Chicago, writing and producing scores of hits for other artists. He also owned the Mayfield and Windy C labels, distributed by Cameo-Parkway, and was partners in the Curtom label (first independent, then distributed by Buddah then Warner Bros and finally RSO). Finally in 1970 he decided to part company with The Impressions and go solo. Curtom would go on to release most of Mayfield's landmark 70's records, as well as records by the Impressions, Leroy Hutson, The Staple Singers, Mavis Staples, and Baby Huey and the Babysitters, a group which at the time included Chaka Khan, with many of these records being produced by Mayfield.

The commercial and critical peak of his solo career came with the album Super Fly, the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film of the same name, and one of the most influential albums in African-American history. Unlike the soundtracks to other blaxploitation films, most notably Isaac Hayes' score for "Shaft", which glorified the ghetto excesses of the characters, Mayfield's lyrics consisted of hard-hitting commentary on the state of affairs in black, urban ghettos at the time, as well as direct criticisms of several characters in the film. Bob Donat wrote in Rolling Stone Magazine in 1972 that while the film's message "was diluted by schizoid cross-purposes" because it "glamorizes machismo-cocaine consciousness... the anti-drug message on [Mayfield's soundtrack] is far stronger and more definite than in the film." Along with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going' On" and Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions", this album ushered in a new socially conscious, funky style to soul music. He was dubbed 'The Gentle Genius' to reflect his outstanding and innovative musical output with the constant presence of his soft yet insistent vocals.
"Super Fly" brought phenomenal success that resulted in Mayfield being tapped for additional soundtracks, some of which he wrote and produced while having others perform the vocals. Gladys Knight & the Pips recorded Mayfield's soundtrack for "Claudine" in 1974, while Aretha Franklin recorded the soundtrack for "Sparkle" in 1976. Mayfield worked with Mavis Staples on the 1977 soundtrack for the film "A Piece of the Action". He was in danger of overreaching himself being writer, producer, performer, arranger and businessman but seemed to cope and still produce a remarkable output.
Though his popularity began to fade in the late 70's with the rise of disco, Mayfield continued to record hopeful, inspirational music and tour actively in the United States, Europe, and Japan. In 1990, during an outdoor concert in Brooklyn, New York, a lighting scaffold fell on him and he was left paralyzed from the neck down. Amazingly though he continued to compose and record music, learning to sing while lying flat on his back and letting gravity create the necessary pressure on his lungs. In 1995 he received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the following year he released what proved to be his final album, "New World Order". In the years following his accident, Mayfield’s health continued to deteriorate, and in 1998 his right leg was amputated due to complications from diabetes.
On December 26, 1999, Mayfield's failing health finally got the better of him and he passed away at the age of 57. A two-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (he gained admission with the Impressions in 1991 and as a solo performer in 1999), Mayfield had been living in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Altheida. He had 10 children and seven grandchildren.

So there it is a brief history on one of my all time favourite artists Curtis Mayfield, who is remembered for his introduction of social consciousness into R&B and for pioneering the funk style in the 1970s, with many of his recordings, with the Impressions becoming anthems of the Civil Rights and Black Pride Movements in the 1960s. He also has left us with the album, "Super Fly", which is regarded as an all-time great (#69 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums) that influenced many and truly invented a new style of modern black music. His distinctive, hard guitar riffs influenced the development of funk, and were highly influential on a young Jimi Hendrix who cited Mayfield as his biggest influence. When he taught himself how to play guitar, he tuned the guitar to the black keys of the piano, giving him an open F-sharp tuning — F#, A#, C#, F#, A#, F# — that he used throughout his career. Also, he sang most of his lines in falsetto (not unique in itself, but other singers in his time mostly sang tenor), adding another flavour and uniqueness to his sound. He is also regarded as influencing other landmark albums, like Herbie Hancock's 'Head Hunters'. One magazine notes, "eulogies...have treated him...as a sort of secular saint--rather like an American Bob Marley". That noted, as said earlier, he is not as well-known as contemporaries like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, or James Brown, perhaps because of their more consistent streams of hits or more mainstream style of music. Nevertheless, he is still highly regarded for his numerous innovations in the 1960s and 1970s and for his unique style of music, perhaps best described as "black psychedelia... remarkable for the scope of its social awareness".