Both Curtis Mayfield's career started with pop songs, love songs and party songs he had socially conscious songs that evolved as Black Pride and the Civil Rights movement did. As you scrol down this page and look at the years of the releases of these examples, you will see a paralell with the Civil Rights movement. You will see Curtis' lyrics slowly move from the Martin Luther King philosophy to a more militant Stokely Charmichaelesque attitude. In Curtis' own words, he felt it was his mission to reflect on what was going on around him and as the movement changed his "musical reporting" morphed with it. Here is the first of many direct quotes form the book "Traveling Soul," a biography on Curtis, written by his son:
“He never felt his job was to keep that peaceful movement going; rather he felt called to reflect what the people around him felt and experienced. These people felt increasingly furious, paranoid, depressed, abandoned. ”
This attitude was adopted by early hip hop artists like Public Enemy and NWA... not without controversy.
Excerpt From: Todd Mayfield. “Traveling Soul.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/DgDOdb.l
Curtis' Music becomes progressively funkier, edgier and more Afro-centric as we scroll down the page. This is really apparent when you compare "You're a Winner" with "If There's a Hell Below..." This transition marks the beginning of Curtis' solo career after leaving "The Impressions." All of this music is enhanced by the unique arranging skills of Johnny Pate who contributes most of the horn parts and string parts to these tracks. Pate was a long-time collaborator with Mayfield. The two men went their separate ways after Super Fly. Johnny Pate was an innovator in what became known as the Chicago R&B sound.
Also notable in Mayfield's music are the vocal arrangements, particularly in the Impressions tracks and Curtis' unique guitar style which is rhythmic and smooth at the same time. His style is difficult to imitate due to the fact that he tuned his guitar to an Open F# chord. A tuning he started with as a kid experimenting when he tuned his guitar to the black keys of a piano.
MLK's I Have A Dream Speech
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham,
During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators.
Assassination of John F Kennedy
“During this time of great uncertainty, many movement activists adopted “It’s All Right” as a message song. They took strength and solace from lyrics like “When you wake up early in the morning / Feeling sad like so many of us do / Hum a little soul, make life your goal / And surely something’s got to come to you.” Curtis didn’t mean it that way—he wasn’t quite mature enough as an artist. Regardless, the song spoke to the activists, giving them the assurance they needed to continue their difficult, dangerous work. Noticing the way people interpreted his song inspired Dad and opened his mind to new possibilities.”
Excerpt From: Todd Mayfield. “Traveling Soul.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/DgDOdb.l
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Keep On Pushing” helped take the Civil Rights movement to the mainstream. It was released around the time that Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in July 1964. It also signified a time when citizens concerned with civil rights were relieved to see thatKennedy's successor, Johnson, would continue in the interest of civil rights when he signed the act into law.
Nice article on "Keep in Pushing" and "People Get Ready" here
Malcom X is Assassinated
March to Montgomery in support of voting rights is stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Race riots in the Watts District of Los Angeles
President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first time.
“People Get Ready” is the black anthem of the 1960s,”
“The song plays like a meditation, a hymn, a love letter to the fathomless strength and endless struggle of Negroes in America. It opens with a haunting, hummed melody that sends chills up the spine. Johnny’s arrangement is masterful—pizzicato strings and lilting violin lines weaving around plinking chimes. Once Curtis begins singing, it is clear he’d found a way to merge the movement’s vast hope with the fierce sadness and pain Negroes experienced trying to make that hope a reality.
My father intended “People Get Ready” to reach far back in history, even as it kept an eye on the future. His lyrics brought the coded messages of old Negro spirituals into the turbulent ’60s. When he sang about a train to Jordan, everyone fighting for their rights in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia knew what he meant. Everyone who had migrated to Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and California knew it too.
It was the same train that formed the Underground Railroad during slavery; it was the train that brought Annie Bell and millions like her to northern cities during the Great Migration; it was the movement train my father’s generation boarded, determined to get to a better place”
Excerpt From: Todd Mayfield. “Traveling Soul.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/DgDOdb.l
Martin Luther King is assassinated
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968,
This is the first time that words of anger started to enter Curtis' music. This song was written as a reaction to the assassinations of JFK, MLK Malcom-X and Robert Kennedy. All of which became signs of a weakend Civil Rights movement. This song shares a title with an older patriotic folk song. We are not sure if this is intentional or coincidental.
We're a Winner was Curtis' boldest effort of all his songs with The Impressions. It became the predecessor and opened the doors to future efforts like James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud," The Isley Brother's "Fight the Powers that Be" and Sly's "Don't Call Me N**&er, Whitey"
The lyrics open up a concept in pop music that paints a picture of African Americans being financially successful while not disconnecting from their true culture, The song incorporates Black rhythms and slang.
A rather edgey track here. Enter classroom use with caution. At this point in his career, Curtis had a large white following, this may have been the first time they heard a Black man use the word N*&&er on a recording as it was included in his ominous echo introduction. This song taunts Richard Nixon as it addresses race relations and oppression in America. This was the first release of Curtis' after leaving the Impressions. You can hear how he went into a funkier direction. A very powerful track if the racial verbiage is not a problem for your class.
A beautiful heartfelt, lamenting ballad about being Black in America. Rather than paraphrasing I would rather quote the analysis of this in the words of his own son form the biography “Traveling Soul”:
“... on “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” by which point Dad had already presented three of the best songs he’d ever written. “Blue” blew them out of the water. It starts as a slow blues, as he confronts society’s expectations of black people. “We’re just good for nothing they all figure,” he sings, “A boyish, grown up, shiftless jigger.” (As Andrew Young said, “It’s ‘jigger’ but he meant ‘nigger.’”) He confronts black people’s feelings of self-worth relating to skin color, singing, “High yellow girl, can’t you tell / You’re just the surface of our dark, deep well?” Perhaps most powerfully, he confronts the white world’s version of history, singing, “Pardon me, brother, as you stand in your glory / I know you won’t mind if I tell the whole story.”
Then, the song stops and shifts abruptly. Master Henry’s congas take control as the rhythm section pushes into fast, syncopated funk. And when my father sings, “If your mind could really see / You’d know your color the same as me,” it is clear how far he’d grown beyond his work with the Impressions. No longer was there a choice of colors[…]”
Excerpt From: Todd Mayfield. “Traveling Soul.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/DgDOdb.l
This title written at the hight of cynicism for the Vietnam war is self explanatory. Curtis returns to hope an optimism here as he does in the next example.
The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools.
This song basically admits that the Civil rights movement had stronger times but he preaches hope for a new generation and emphasizes survival.
After agreeing to create the soundtrack for a Blaxploitation film called "Super Fly," and reviewing the script, Curtis discovered the it read like an infomercial for cocaine. Though he was no stranger to this drug, it would later take over his life for a while, he still did not want to take part in glorifying something that he believed was tearing up his neighborhood. Instead of refusing to f do the soundtrack, Curtis decided to revers the meaning of the film via the lyrics of his songs.
The result was a set of songs that played as commentary throughout the film. Each was it's own character study and was based on his own experiences growing up poor in Chicago.
In the film Freddie was sort of the "fall guy for the drug dealer/pimp named Priest. Curtis had a lot of sympathy for this character as he said that he knew a lot of "Freddies" growing up. Lost souls that ended up in bad situations. you can hear that sympathy in the song.
Aside from being arguably one of the greatest movie soundtracks ever. Super Fly, along with a hand full of other 70s films, can be used to introduce the concept of "Blaxploitation: films: The first films ever, made almost exclusively by African Americans and portrayed inner-city culture, characters and events. Hip-hop would take this role on later.