Initially I distrusted these putatively middlebrow guides to black pride--"Miss Black America" indeed. But a lot of black people found them estimable, so I listened some more, and I'm glad. Since Mayfield is a more trustworthy talent than Isaac Hayes, I wasn't too surprised at the durability of the two long cuts--the percussion jam is as natural an extension of soul music (those Sunday handclaps) as the jazzish solo. What did surprise me was that the whole project seemed less and less middlebrow as I got to know it. Forget the harps--"Move On Up" is Mayfield's most explicit political song, "If There's a Hell Below We're All Gonna Go" revises the usual gospel pieties, and "Miss Black America" has its charms, too. B+ -- R. ChristgauHere's a Curtis Mayfield (of the Impressions) solo album; so far as I know, the first. Most of the eight cuts are distinctly Impressionistic, and one, "Miss Black America," includes Sam and Fred singing choruses. There are really no surprises in this album. It's just eight more Mayfield tunes, sweet music to Mayfield maybe, but not what I'd call the best demonstration of the man's talents.
For the past year or so, a lot of Mayfield's tunes have seemed die-cast and lacking in character. He appears to be unable to develop either a musical or lyrical theme to fullness these days, and many of his songs are fragmentary, garbled and frustrating to listen to. Lyrically, his songs are a whole lot more rhyme than reason; which isn't so uncommon, except that he tries to deal with some pretty serious and complex subjects by stringing together phrases that end with the same sound — whether they make sense together or not. Sure, it's all subjective, but I can't myself see that what we need is "Respect for the steeple/power to the people."
The arrangements are all pretty uninspired, a little bit halfhearted — maybe largely because there's so little melodic meat to most of the tunes. A few of the songs move well, mainly on the backs of the conga, bass and guitar men; but the long tracks (six to eight minutes) are a mighty long way for three men to try and carry all that weight.
Five of these cuts may get some airplay and popularity, for one or more of three reasons: because they were written by Curtis Mayfield of Impressions' fame; because they have a good dance beat; or because they deal with "social issues" in a nice, bland, inoffensive, inconclusive way. "(Don't Worry) If there's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go" is a pretty good example. It's jumpy, it's got words like "nigger" and "cracker," "hell" and "Nixon," and it says no more than the title. "The Other Side of Town" presents a grim view of a black man's life and feelings in the ghetto. "We the People Who Are Darker than Blue" is the only song on the album that does some gear-shifting, rhythm-wise; but it doesn't go anywhere, messagewise. "Move On Up" has some life to it, but not eight minutes and 50 seconds' worth. "Miss Black America" strikes me as a good musical commemorative stamp, complete with an authentic black girlchild saying she wants to be a sex-object when she grows up.
Mayfield has written good material in the past. I'm hoping that he's just in a slump, and that he'll soon be writing tunes with real life in them again. This album, though, is pretty much just disjointed skeletons. -- Wendell John, RS
I'll give you some melodic meat.
Seriously, though...garbled? Curtis Mayfield's first solo record is about as eloquent and direct a political statement as would be made by a major artist in the 70s. And the arrangements are sublime.
RS abhorred Curtis Mayfield when he was in his prime. Jon Landau panned Curtis/Live! in the 6/24/71 issue: "Since leaving the Impressions Mayfield has ignored his melodic gifts while turning out a series of Sly Stone-Norman Whitfield influenced tunes that have been singularly undistinguished. He concentrates on lyrics these days and those have become increasingly political and pretentious...There are frequent moments of embarrassment..." Russell Gersten characterized Mayfield's third solo album, Roots, as "a confused and confusing record" that had "undoubtedly been influenced, both conceptually and technically, by Marvin Gaye's What's Going On." The charge that Mayfield is ripping off Marvin Gaye is bizarre - Mayfield's lyrics, both with the Impressions and on Curtis, had a political bent long before Gaye was speaking out. I have to think it was Mayfield that primarily inspired Gaye, not the other way around. "One of the main problems with [Roots] is that you can feel a lack of conviction" Gersten wrote in the 2/17/72 issue. "The past few years have been rather painful transitional years for soul music, and this is only one of many sort of schizoid attempts."
Because he was never as commercially successful as many of his contemporaries, Curtis Mayfield's legacy continues to be dwarfed by people like Marvin Gaye, Smoky Robinson, and any number of Motown artists. But, for my money, Mayfield was the premier soul artist of the 60s and 70s. -- schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time
Listening to Curtis/Live! reminded me how much I love Curtis Mayfield. On a cold winter night in January 1971, Mayfield performed an intimate show at the Bitter End, a small New York City jazz club to an adoring audience. In between songs he’d rap about the songs, or whatever was on his mind. His soft spoken voice exuded a loving gentleness and humor, but just under the surface was a righteous anger and a little sorrow. His extensive history of socially conscious songs always seemed to hit hard with such authority that eclipsed anything by Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. And his spirituality is so natural and subtle that he would have made more sense as a reverend than Al Green, the conflicted, tortured hedonist who eventually gave up secular music, but never seemed to have as deep a grasp of spiritual matters as Mayfield. Which is why even though some of Green’s exquisitely produced and performed albums rate higher than some of Mayfield’s, Mayfield is my main soul man.
I honestly can’t find any fault with Curtis Mayfield. His work with the Impressions is impeccible. By 1968, in his second attempt (his first attempt was Windy C Records in 1966), he had established the first truly successful black artist-owned record label, Curtom with partner Eddie Thomas. After recording the Impressions’ strongest albums, This Is My Country (1968) and The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story(1969), Mayfield felt he needed to drop out from touring to work on his label and spend some time in his home town of Chicago with family. The respite was short lived. His creativity was burning bright, and without the restraints of writing for a harmony group and someone else’s label, he was able to let his muse run wild. And wild it was.
His brilliant concoction of psychedelic soul and bongo/conga-driven funk sparkle and bubble with a vivacious lust for life. Even his righteous indignation glows with his love for humanity. His no-bullshit, clear falsetto vocals may not be as accomplished as Al’s, but the plaintive sweet tones are always spot-on, complementing the music that is often gritty, dark, and even menacing (hear “(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below We’re All Going To Go,” where his processed vocals at first sound like howls from the firey pits before reverting to his more laidback falsetto). “The Makings Of You,” “We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” “Move On Up,” it was all killer, no filler. -- Fastnbulbous
review
[-] by Bruce EderThe first solo album by the former leader of the Impressions, Curtis represented a musical apotheosis for Curtis Mayfield -- indeed, it was practically the "Sgt. Pepper's" album of '70s soul, helping with its content and its success to open the whole genre to much bigger, richer musical canvases than artists had previously worked with. All of Mayfield's years of experience of life, music, and people were pulled together into a rich, powerful, topical musical statement that reflected not only the most up-to-date soul sounds of its period, finely produced by Mayfield himself, and the immediacy of the times and their political and social concerns, but also embraced the most elegant R&B sounds out of the past. As a producer, Mayfield embraced the most progressive soul sounds of the era, stretching them out compellingly on numbers like "Move on Up," but also drew on orchestral sounds (especially harps), to achieve some striking musical timbres (check out "Wild and Free"), and wove all of these influences, plus the topical nature of the songs, into a neat, amazingly lean whole. There was only one hit single off of this record, "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Down Below We're All Going to Go," which made number three, but the album as a whole was a single entity and really had to be heard that way. In the fall of 2000, Rhino Records reissued Curtis with upgraded sound and nine bonus tracks that extended its running time to over 70 minutes. All but one are demos, including "Miss Black America" and "The Making of You," but mostly consist of tracks that he completed for subsequent albums; they're fascinating to hear, representing very different, much more jagged and stripped-down sounds. The upgraded CD concludes with the single version of "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go."