Traveling Soul

by Todd Mayfield

  Touring was harder on the band than the Impressions. My father, Fred, and Sam never rode the bus—they sat in the comfort of their Cadillacs. Band members could ride with them, but the rule was they had to drive. So, it was either driving all night in a Cadillac, or jostling on the bus, where sometimes the heat would break and they’d freeze their balls off, or they’d all be sick, sneezing, and coughing, or the driver wouldn’t stop when they needed a bathroom so they’d have to piss in coffee cans.

  Even in the comfort of his Caddy, Dad was worn out. He’d traveled the country nonstop since he was a child with the Northern Jubilee Singers. “I shouldn’t even be traveling, in this tax bracket,” he said. Fred was tired too. “We’d get up at eight or nine in the morning and do four or five shows, man, and work to two AM, and then get up the next morning at eight or nine again and do it for seven days,” he said. “It wears you out.”

  Touring also left them with very little time to pursue other interests. Fred started a beauty salon in Chicago and wanted to open several more, but, as he said, “I have to be there for that.” Sam dreamed of playing professional baseball—a chance he’d passed up for a life of singing. “I still play semi-pro baseball,” he said. “I had an offer from the Chicago Cubs back in 1959. At that time, we had a hit record. And I thought the guy wasn’t coming back, so I stayed with the group. But I’d rather play ball right now, rather play than sing. It’d keep me in better shape.”

  My father, as usual, had too many interests at once. Constant traveling inhibited his creativity. “I used to write all the time,” he said. “I’d never sit around like this, especially on the road. I want to write stories, too. Once for a week I had dreams every night that were complete stories. They were like movies—I could see the things.” He’d never find time to write those stories.

  He also struggled navigating the pressures of family life. He had children, he said, “which means responsibilities, securities, college for the children and a place to try and finally lay out for them. As well as our own selfish pleasures, y’know, sports cars and big time, but no more than anybody else.”

  Dad didn’t want out of the game; he just wanted to change its rules. The old model—write an album, cut it, promote it, tour it, come home, repeat—no longer made him happy. “Being an entertainer, even though it’s beautiful and it’s nice in the public’s eye and to have people gawking at you, it has its hangups,” he said.

  We don’t have as much privacy as we would like. I resent it, but I find my resentment’s in vain simply because I brought it to be. I wanted to be successful, I wanted the money, I like doing what I’m doing, I wanted to be just what I am. Now I’ve got to give up some of those other things. There’s other stars who’ve got to be even more hungup whether they realize it or not—James Brown, the Beatles, some of the bigger acts—they can’t do nothing. At least in most places, even though I may be Curtis Mayfield, I can mix in the crowd, where a lot of people can’t do that.

  My father often tagged along with the road band on days off, while Fred and Sam generally stayed to themselves—a reversal of the way they usually acted on tour. As a result, André and Craig introduced him to the cutting edge of music, taking him to see people like Carlos Santana, who was a big fan of the Impressions. “When Curtis Mayfield would sing, he would remind me of my totality,” Santana said. “He reminded me that I am part of Martin Luther King. I am part of Cesar Chavez. I am part of Bobby Kennedy. It transcends white, black, Mexican, or whatever. He resonated with me because I identified with something bigger than a nation.”

  Watching artists like Santana, Dad began hearing different possibilities—rhythmic and harmonic grooves he couldn’t do with the Impressions. Craig taught him how to use effects pedals and write with chords outside normal blues or gospel changes. My father trusted Craig and learned from him. Their relationship became so close, an unwritten rule developed—no one touched Curtis’s guitar, even to tune it, except Craig.

  As the camaraderie grew, the road band spent downtime joking with my father, maybe asking what new songs he was working on or just hanging out in his hotel room. They had nicknames for each other—André was “College Boy” because of the erudition of his speech, my father was “Bucky Beaver” because of his big teeth, and Melvin was “Fattenin’ Frogs for Snakes.” That last one was a favorite of road manager Robert Cobbins. Melvin always had his eye on a girl at each show, but every time he tried to bring her in the dressing room, Lucky would say, “No, you have to leave the girl outside. Talk to her after you change your clothes.” Lucky would hurry up and get dressed, and by the time Melvin came out, Lucky would be gone with the girl. Melvin would shake his head and say, “Fattenin’ frogs for snakes.” Every time Robert saw Melvin, he’d say, “Here comes Fattenin’ Frogs for Snakes.” The camaraderie wasn’t constant though, and many times my father would find a girl of his own and disappear.

  Still, the band gelled. “Curtis was not hard to work for at all, but you definitely had to know your part,” André says.

  You couldn’t do something obviously wrong, and there had to be dynamics. The rule was if you couldn’t hear the vocals, you were playing too loud. At the time, there weren’t sound crews and semis pulling up. It was tour buses and tired musicians setting up their own equipment. The sound systems weren’t great, and sometimes you couldn’t hear properly. There would be no monitors on stage, and you’d hear the echo back of the house speakers, which was disconcerting if you’re trying to play time. What happens is, you didn’t spread yourself out too far on stage. You set up close to each other to play like an ensemble. Even when you saw James Brown, they wouldn’t set up far apart. They’d be like an arm’s length away from each other. That’s for communication. That was very special for Curtis.

  As the year wore on, more heavy changes came over the world. In July, humanity broke its bond with Mother Earth and put its first footprints on the moon. In August, the biggest gathering of peace-loving hippies in history took place on Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, New York. The Woodstock concert marked the climax of the 1960s. Thirty-two of the decade’s most influential acts performed for four hundred thousand people, and the concert was captured in a film that encapsulated the spirit of the times—the escapism into drugs, the belief that music and love could stop war, the certainty that the youth (at least, white youth) would change the world.

  Hendrix closed the festival with a new band he called Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, later shortened to Band of Gypsys. On a cold Monday morning, he ripped into a version of the “Star Spangled Banner” that became a haunting epitaph for the era. He put every moment of the brutal, wonderful decade through his guitar, making the national anthem by turns tragic, gorgeous, and jarring—sometimes it sounded like war, like sirens wailing and bombs dropping; sometimes it sounded like rock ’n’ roll, like hallucinogenic drugs and free love; sometimes it sounded like chaos, like riots and assassinations.

  The next month, the Chicago Seven went on trial for inciting the riot at the DNC the year before, and a new group called the Weathermen committed acts of terrorism intended to cripple the American government. Meanwhile, the movement remained without leadership except for the Panthers, who crumbled under pressures from within and without.

  Anger in the militant black community surged as conservative white America became more entrenched against it. The pendulum King had started swinging to the left in the late 1950s, toward black people’s rights, toward equality, now swung almost all the way back. The Panthers’ violent image only helped it swing faster. Even liberal whites began distancing themselves.

  My father tuned into these events as closely as he tuned into the radio as a child. They affected him just as much. He despaired at watching the peaceful movement he had once believed in suffer a bitter, violent death. 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. Dad neede
d to write about these changes, but he didn’t feel right doing it with the Impressions. He needed to get something new across. He hinted at it with “We’re a Winner,” but he had to censor himself while recording that song so ABC would release it. He needed to grow, but he also needed Curtom to grow. One way to increase sales without adding new acts was to do what record companies had been doing to singing groups for decades. It was the exact thing Vee-Jay did to the original Impressions—pull the lead singer from the group and give him a career of his own while the band continued without him.

  Marv had long been in my father’s ear about that. “Everyone makin’ it [is] a singer-songwriter,” he repeated, over and over again. “You’re an artist, you should go out on your own.” Marv angled for more control, and Dad wanted to make him vice president of Curtom. Eddie disagreed, feeling Marv should work his way up the ranks. Dad leaned toward Marv, driving a bigger wedge between him and Eddie. “I suggested to him that he just focus on producing and writing,” Eddie said. “Marv told him that he should start a solo career … I feared that Curtis would burn out in short time.” It was a difficult decision, but my father went with the advice of a man he hardly knew over that of his closest friend and business partner.

  As the ninety-day tour for Young Mods wound down, the Impressions arrived at Madison Square Garden for one of the last shows of the year. The bill that night in New York included Jerry Butler and the Four Tops. André had left the group to play with Jerry, but since the Impressions hadn’t found a solid replacement, he stayed on the stage and performed two sets. The next day Jerry had off, so André went with the Impressions to a gig in Buffalo, New York. It was the dead of winter; the year was dwindling to a close. When they arrived in Buffalo, five feet of snow blanketed the ground. The gig went off, but afterward, the Impressions were mad as hell about something and left Lucky, André, Melvin, and Craig at the auditorium. They had no way to the airport and the theatre was locked, so they stood in the middle of Buffalo, snow up to their chests, facing the prospect of lugging their equipment to God knew where. By some miracle, a man with a station wagon who had seen the show offered them a ride. On the way to the airport, he asked if they wouldn’t mind stopping by a club.

  They wound through the snowy Buffalo streets until they stopped at the club—a real down-home type of place where a local band sweated it out on a small stage. The station-wagon man talked to the locals, said he had the Impressions’ band in the club, and before they knew it, the guys were on stage playing. They jammed from eleven at night until four in the morning. They played every song they knew, made things up on the spot, and brought the roof down.

  As the night petered out, leaving a few stragglers nursing their beers in the hazy predawn, Lucky, André, Melvin, and Craig crammed back into the station wagon and rode to the airport. They gave the man some money, walked inside dead tired, and each boarded a plane to a different city. It was the last time they’d perform together as the Impressions.

  It was a time of endings. The decade sputtered out in a grotesque spasm of bitterness and violence. Free love, flower power, Woodstock, moon landings, marches, movements, assassinations, drugs—the whole vicious, beautiful thing was unraveling. Life was unraveling for my father too. Around this time, my mother finally decided to leave. She tried to put the house up for sale, only to realize her name wasn’t on the deed.

  My father also grew further from Fred and Sam than ever. These were the most important relationships of his life so far, and the longest lasting. Indeed, he might have spent more time with Fred and Sam than he did with my mother or any woman he’d ever known. Somewhere in his mind, though, he knew he needed to leave the group. He didn’t say anything yet, but as 1969 came to a close, he felt the need to free himself, to reinvent himself, to speak his mind like never before.

  When the story about the Impressions’ West Coast tour appeared in Rolling Stone near the end of 1969, Alexander ended it by saying, “[Curtis] is writing the songs of the coming black middle class. The songs of aspirations. A good home, a nice car, decent neighbors, money, educated kids, travel, security. You can’t knock it until you’ve had the opportunity to reject it.”

  In his defense, Alexander couldn’t have known what my father was about to do. And he was right—the Impressions’ music was aimed mostly at the “coming black middle class.” It was about pushing, and moving, and creating a better tomorrow. But my father’s mind had moved somewhere else.

  At twenty-seven years old, he was about to change the game again.

  Curtis as a newborn, Chicago 1942. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis’s grandmother Annie Bell; his father, Mannish; his aunt Mercedes’s son Junior; and Mannish’s wife Rosie, Chicago, date unknown. COURTESY JUDITH MAYFIELD

  The White Eagle Hotel, Chicago, where Curtis and his family lived in the late 1940s. COPYRIGHT 2015, THE CHICAGO MAROON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION

  Curtis in Chattanooga in 1958 after the release of “For Your Precious Love.” He would soon lose the processed hair look. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis in his family’s Cabrini-Green row house, May 1959. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis at age eighteen with his first car, a 1952 Mercedes, at Cabrini-Green in 1960. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis’s mother, Marion, outside the family’s Cabrini-Green home, Chicago 1963. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis at the Apollo Theater in New York City, performing with the Impressions circa 1959. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  The Impressions rehearsing in the studio, Chicago circa 1965. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis and Jackie Wilson, circa 1967. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis and Todd Mayfield, Chicago 1968. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  The Impressions in Los Angeles circa 1969. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis at the Miss Black America pageant 1969. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Backstage before a concert, circa 1973. Curtis’s partner Diane and her son Tracy; Curtis, daughter Sharon, and son Todd; and Grandma Sadie. COURTESY DIANE MAYFIELD

  Curtis at the Berlin Hilton, West Germany circa 1973. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis in London circa 1973. COURTESY MICHAEL PUTLAND

  Curtis at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1987, Switzerland. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Curtis on the Impressions’ 1983 reunion tour. COURTESY MICHAEL PUTLAND

  Curtis and Todd after 1994 Grammy Awards. Curtis received the 1994 Legend Award. JIM MCHUGH

  9

  Move On Up

  “Top billing now is killing,

  For peace, no one is willing.”

  —“(DON’T WORRY) IF THERE’S A HELL BELOW, WE’RE ALL GOING TO GO”

  Chicago, 1970—The decade dawned under dark clouds. Nixon, swept into office with promises of a return to law and order and an end to the Vietnam War, delivered neither. The year turned foul almost immediately. In February, the Weathermen hurled Molotov cocktails all over New York, the Black Liberation Army allegedly bombed a police station in San Francicso, and racists in Colorado bombed school buses that were being used to desegregate a Denver school. Three months later, race riots broke out in Georgia, the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State, and police killed two students during an antiwar rally at historically black Jackson State College in Mississippi. In the music world, Motown’s Tammi Terrell died of brain cancer in March, the Beatles disbanded in April, and Diana Ross released her first album without the Supremes in May. Meanwhile, boys in body bags came home in heaps as the death toll in Vietnam mounted.

  Amid the carnage, my father wrote, produced, and fronted his final Impressions album, Check Out Your Mind. The title track foreshadowed the new direction of his writing—dark, rhythmic, driving. It matched the paranoia eating away at Dad’s generation. The new sounds benefitted from a subtle shift in personnel. Johnny Pate had moved to New York to work for Verve Records, and now my father brought in two other arrangers, Riley Hampton and Gary Slabo.

  Hampton was know
n as the man in Chicago for scoring strings. He did extensive work for OKeh during Curtis’s tenure there as staff writer and producer, and he worked for Vee-Jay, the Impressions’ first label. Hampton also arranged for Motown, and most famously, he worked with Etta James at the pinnacle of her career. His arrangement on her version of “At Last” remains one of the most famous string scores in pop music history.

  Hampton tended toward languid, pretty string lines. When those lines mixed with Slabo’s punchy, insistent horns, the effect became eerie and schizophrenic. It still had the Chicago Sound, but instead of the jazzy swing of Johnny’s arrangements, it was more straightforward, funky, and gripping.

  The sound complemented the times perfectly. Soft drugs like marijuana and psychedelics like LSD had fallen out of fashion; heroin and cocaine now dominated the scene. These drugs had teeth in a way the peaceful drugs of the ’60s didn’t, and they devastated the black community. Many a black soldier copped them in Vietnam and brought them home, where mind-numbing substances helped cope with the haunting specter of war alongside the soul-crushing despair of the ghetto.

  Uncle Kenny never got into that scene, but he recalls the brutal mixture of war and drugs he encountered in Vietnam. “Over there you could get the purest stuff,” he says. “You could always tell when you were going to get hit because you could smell the opium in the air. I have shot somebody with a fifty-caliber machine gun, half his body’s gone, and he’s still trying to get to me. I’ve seen guys get so high, they watch a man come in to kill them.”