Curtis Mayfield

The first time you listen to a historically significant record, you recognize it instantly for what it is. It only takes a few bars to find, in its purest form, everything that - filtered through countless later cross-pollinations - we've come to love in records that followed, or those sounds and ideas that keep nagging at us even though we can't quite place where we've heard them, and that we're determined to track down at all costs. Landmark records aren't discovered, they're re-encountered. And "Superfly" is an extraordinarily significant record.

Curtis Mayfield had already helped, back in the '60s, to forge a strong identity for Chicago soul alongside the Impressions. As the '70s dawned, though, he broke away from the path taken by his peers and by the record industry. He founded an independent label, Curtom, and began filling his songs with urgent political themes that were still taboo at the time. Abandoning the love songs that had nonetheless brought him considerable success, he chose to follow the road first taken by Marvin Gaye and later by Bob Marley ("One Love" is a reworking of Mayfield's "People Get Ready", credited as co-writer in the liner notes of "Exodus"). He wasn't afraid to call himself "militant", and as a result he ran into serious trouble producing and promoting his music. Many of his songs became anthems for the Black Panthers. For his part, Curtis adopted an "alternative" look, built around hats and military uniforms. His Chicago was one of the key battlegrounds in the fight for racial equality, against the conservative ethic that kept the "New Negroes" ghettoized, but soul radio stations and labels were still catering to white audiences. His songs were, in fact, systematically censored.

The early '70s were also the years of "blaxploitation": movements for Black civil rights exploited genre cinema as a propaganda tool. Crime films were made featuring Black detectives, Black villains and beautiful Black women. From the ghettos and for the ghettos, with a rawness, a violence and a sense of reality still unknown to the paler mainstream models. And with a lot more sex, too. Often with excellent soundtracks. The trailblazer of this phenomenon was Gordon Parks' "Shaft", with music by Isaac Hayes.

Hayes' work is excellent, and it's built on the same motifs that would later become typical of "Superfly", but it's a classic soundtrack, instrumental and tightly bound to the images on screen. It isn't especially dense, and leaves a bit of a bittersweet aftertaste for the listener who isn't also watching the film.

A year after “Shaft,” in 1972, Mayfield released “Superfly,” the soundtrack to the film of the same name, which was reviewed, depending on one's point of view, as either just another b-movie or as a brilliant, misunderstood example of black neorealism. Either way, it would go on to gross $6,400,000!

The film is supposed to be a sort of anti-drug parable, but audiences at the time found the soundtrack far more compelling (cf. Bob Donat, Rolling Stone, 7/9/1972), which climbed to the top of the charts anyway and stayed there throughout July 1972.

Of the nine tracks, only two are classic instrumental film themes. The rest are proper songs, blessed with excellent lyrics on top of everything else. They correspond more or less to the film's scenes: Curtis, an unconventional narrator, guides us through the story of young, powerful drug dealer Youngblood Priest. At the same time, he gives us some of the best street funk ever recorded, built on sly basslines, possessed horns and one of the greatest voices of all time.

“Little Child Runnin' Wild” is the story's prologue and a clear statement of intent. It's Curtis's aching voice that throws open the doors to a world of ambiguity and vice. It's not just the expression of a people's rage, it's also, and above all, the intimate reflection of an individual, regardless of color or race. The fact that it's so beautifully crafted, though, is entirely down to the man's black musical roots.

In “Pusherman” the protagonist introduces himself: “I'm your mama, I'm your daddy (…) I'm your pusherman.” A serene bassline takes charge, with guitars playing timidly around it. A small, razor-sharp gem of a song. “Freddie's Dead” reached the top of the charts and missed out on an Oscar only due to the usual prudishness. More conventional than the other two, it stretches out with bold, blaring horns. These last two songs alone would be enough to make “Superfly” a great record and to cement Mayfield's formula, a brilliant synthesis of Isaac Hayes's funk, his own socially aware lyrics, and Curtis's magic touch as a performer (above all, the delightful way he pronounces the word “pusherman”). But it doesn't end there…

“Junkie Chase” is the first instrumental. Pure, breakneck funk. Without Curtis's sweet, aching voice, the music turns decisively menacing. “Give Me Your Love (Love Song)” is the jazzy backdrop to a scene in which Youngblood is occupied in a bathtub with a girl. Even though it's sung, it edges closer to film-score conventions and to a slower, easier, more conventional strain of funk. Always filtered through Curtis Mayfield's sensibility, of course.

The following “Eddie You Should Know Better” is emblematic in this respect: achingly sweet melodies stretch and expand alongside the voice. And yet so much beauty almost pales next to “No Thing On Me (Cocaine Song)”: a wispy falsetto, melodic echoes that a certain strain of disco would learn a great deal from. Sunnier than anything before it, yet as ambiguous as its title. The record's absolute peak.

On the second instrumental, “Think,” Mayfield plays guitar, his great love, alone throughout the intro, and seems to unwind after pouring out tension, cynicism and pain across seven supremely funky tracks, all built on a formidable rhythmic foundation.

“Superfly,” thumping and driven by a stunning guitar line in the background, brings us back to the street, and the curtain falls where it first rose.

“Superfly” isn't just a superb album: seen in retrospect, it's the archetype of “hard and pure” early-'70s funk. A record packed with gorgeous, frenzied rhythms, superb melodies and truly unique lyrics. A record that is deeply black but also, in a way, singer-songwriter at heart.

Mayfield puts the conventions and self-awareness of black music in the service of a rawness of feeling typical of the best rock music. Perhaps that's why soul's hardcore fanbase soon fell out of love with him, but plenty of others started loving him right around then.

The following years would bring Curtis Mayfield further success, but also tragedy. In 1990, during a concert in Brooklyn, the lighting rig collapsed on top of him: the accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. He died at the end of 1999, aged fifty-seven. But his legend has continued to grow, winning over ever new generations of fans.

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22/07/2007