Influential Mayfield Sang Heartfelt Message of Hope

Few pop stars knew more about life’s unfairness than Curtis Mayfield, but he was the last one ever to complain. The massively influential singer-songwriter, who died Sunday at age 57, believed his role was to lift his audience’s spirits, not dampen them.

As an African American growing up in Chicago in the 1940s and ‘50s, Mayfield knew about the dehumanizing sting of discrimination, but his message, in such socially conscious hits as “We’re a Winner” and “Keep on Pushing,” was consistently positive--as if he had personally seen the promised land of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons and wanted to share the vision.

Indeed, if King had been a songwriter, he would have been Curtis Mayfield. There is in the best of Mayfield’s music a spiritual eloquence and unwavering faith.

Even after he was paralyzed from the neck down in a freak accident at a 1990 concert, Mayfield’s manner never turned bitter. His physical condition had deteriorated so much by the time he recorded his last album, 1996’s “New World Order,” that he had to sing while lying down to preserve his strength.

Yet Mayfield continued to speak about life’s blessings, both in his music and in interviews.

Mayfield was at his commercial peak the first time I interviewed him, in 1973, and the thing I remember most about him was the gentleness of his manner and his seeming lack of ego. His “Superfly” album had been No. 1 for four weeks the year before and he was selling out auditoriums around the country. But it was hard to get him to talk about his career or even much about his past. To him, the important thing was his message.

“I think my grandmother was one of my biggest influences,” he said in that soft, high voice that was so familiar from his recordings. “She was a very religious person. She always had something inspiring to say.”

Because of the legacy of the ‘60s, it’s easy today to think that every artist in R&B; and rock contributed to the social commentary of the decade. But Mayfield was one of the pioneers in that movement.

Three years before James Brown’s “Say It Loud--I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Mayfield and his vocal group, the Impressions, broke into the R&B; Top 10 in 1965 with “People Get Ready,” a gospel-tinged celebration about the escalating civil rights movement. It’s a song that has since been sung by countless artists, including such acclaimed figures as Bob Dylan and Bob Marley:

People get ready, there’s a train a comin’

You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’. . . .

Then--still two years before Marvin Gaye’s move into social consciousness with “What’s Going On” and five years before Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions” album, Mayfield and the Impressions reached No. 1 on the R&B; charts in 1968 with “We’re a Winner,” another statement of black pride:

No more tears to cry

The black boy done dried his eyes

We’re movin’ on up

Lord, have mercy

We’re movin’ on up.

Though these songs helped define ‘60s protest music in America, Mayfield didn’t like that term. It sounded too harsh, too negative; “faith” and “inspiration” were the terms he used over and over to describe the message of his music.

” 1/8The message 3/8 makes me feel there is truly something to contribute other than just being a singer,” he said in the 1973 interview. “I think this is what made the Impressions a group among groups--not just because they were entertainers but because there was something truly to be said 1/8in the music 3/8. . . . I’m not singing protest; I’m only singing 1/8about 3/8 the actual reality of what’s going on around us.”

But Mayfield, of course, did write protest songs. He condemned violence and racial division in 1969’s “Mighty Mighty (Spade & Whitey)” and attacked social indifference in 1970’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going Go.”

Mayfield enjoyed considerable success as a member of the Impressions until 1970 and then as a solo artist, but the success was chiefly in the R&B; field rather than in the wider pop world. One reason was that he recorded for labels, including ABC-Paramount and Curtom, that lacked the star-making machinery of a powerhouse such as Motown.

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That lower pop profile is reflected in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters inducting Motown’s Four Tops and Temptations before the equally deserving Impressions, even though Mayfield’s group was eligible first. Similarly, the voters passed over Mayfield at least three years before inducting him as a solo artist this year.

Some rock stars have been so upset by such slights that they have asked the Hall of Fame to take their names off the ballot or have not shown up to accept the honor.

But Mayfield never expressed surprise, much less disappointment, at yet another unfair turn in his life. Though too ill to attend the ceremonies in New York, he sent a message expressing his gratitude.

“We’re complimented that people look on us as spokesmen,” Mayfield once said about the music he made with the Impressions. “But we just think we’re singing what all the brothers feel.”

However belated the honors, Mayfield’s legacy is celebrated daily in the music of artists who are also singing about what the brothers (and sisters) feel--from the hard-core rap of Dr. Dre and Ice Cube to the more sophisticated hip-hop of Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu.

More than sales charts or statuettes, it’s the continuing impact that is the true measure of an artist’s accomplishments. By that standard, Mayfield, the voice of inspiration in R&B; for four decades, was one of the true giants of American pop.