oneweekoneband:

“Hard to Understand, What a Hell of a Man” - Introduction to Curtis Mayfield

Among twenty-something-year-old fans of Curtis Mayfield I’m probably somewhat of an anomaly, and not because I was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, an ocean away from the neglected streets Curtis talked about in his most hard hitting songs. No, what sets me apart from most, I’d imagine, is that I actually found the movie Super Fly before I found Curtis and not vice versa.

Of course, like everyone else ‘Move on Up’ was burned into my musical hardwiring and an old mix tape of soul music I made while still in school contained ‘Pusherman’ I think, but I didn’t really know Curtis until my roommate Chris and I, as part of us ploughing through our other roommates’ massive and diverse DVD collection, threw on Super Fly.

I’ve watched the film numerous times since. For me it sparked an extended interest in blaxploitation movies and, obviously, their music. As any fan of genre will tell you, it’s impossible to separate your love for the films from their accompanying soundtracks.

In saying that, Super Fly itself is a wonderful film, though far from a perfect one. The script was so short it relies on lengthy driving sequences, photo montages and other editing trickery to pad out its length. But between these extended moments are scenes of great power and intrigue. Ron O’Neal, a stage actor with a thirst to become a movie star, is wonderful as Priest, as is Carl Lee as his partner in crime Eddie. His monologue delivered to camera on the futility of trying to escape the cocaine game (which opens the video I’ve posted above) remains one of cinema’s most jaw dropping scenes of its kind.

But despite its successes as a motion picture, Super Fly is in a very exclusive club. It’s one of the few films that has been out-grossed by its soundtrack, and it’s Curtis Mayfield’s incredible music that has mainly been remembered. Taking the opportunity to score a film that’s been accused of glamorising the life of a drug dealer, Curtis used the forum to tell advisory tales of America’s drugged-out and poverty-stricken seventies ghettos.

Superfly became one of my favourite albums of all time, so naturally I took an invested interest in Mayfield. I began digging through record bins for anything with Curtis’s name attached. I bought flawed compilations with hidden gems, and worked my way through Mayfield’s work practically one track at time. Ultimately, Curtis gets remembered as one of the great politically and socially conscious artists, and rightly so. From his earliest compositions, right through to his final record (cut after a tragic accident left him paralysed from the neck down) he never lost that spirit for social change. But this was still only half the man. He wrote everything from doo-wop toe tappers, disco floor-fillers, woman-done-me-wrong blues jams and hot funk workouts, many of which have fallen through the cracks of time, scattered around on sadly forgotten records.

When I was asked to pick an artist for this project, Curtis was the first name that came to mind, and while I flirted with other ideas, there was something inside me that kept going back to him, like a deep-seeded obsession to figure the man out. Unlike some of his better known contemporaries who would be considered his equal, Curtis’s discography cannot be neatly condensed into a compilation of his biggest singles, and the size and quality of his back catalogue might surprise casual fans. In that respect, he’s the perfect artist to highlight on One Week // One Band. I just hope I can do him some justice.

Much like how I originally investigated his work, expect me to jump back and forth around Curtis’s incredible discography over the course of the next week, fluttering between short notes on single tracks, to longer essays on various aspects of the Mayfield legacy as I try to drill into the work of a master. But for the rest of today I’m going to focus on his seminal masterpiece Super Fly, in the hope its genius will encourage you to read on, much like it inspired me to make the journey in the first place.

The intro to my week over at One Week // One Blog. Check out all 7000 words I penned on Curtis Mayfield these past seven days here.