Traveling Soul

by Todd Mayfield

  “Move on Up” also bore ties that still bound him to the Impressions. The song was slated for Check Out Your Mind, but my father kept it for himself. At the same time, he put “Miss Black America” on the Curtis album, which the Impressions recorded for a beauty pageant of the same name in 1969. With Fred and Sam on backing vocals, it belongs more to the Impressions than Curtis. But in the context of Curtis, it takes on political and even feminist overtones, confronting society’s standards of beauty and skin color as they related to black women.

  The album finishes with “Give It Up,” which, despite triumphant orchestration, plays more like a heartbreaking farewell to my parents’ ending relationship. Even though they still made room to raise us together respectfully, my mother had left, and on some level, they knew their problems had no solutions (although they’d try a few more times). “No matter how much we try / Our indifference would still show,” my father sings. “Now we’ve got to give it up.” It was a bittersweet way to end the album, and it marked a major shift in our lives. Sharon, Tracy, and I moved with Mom, and our family was now shared across two homes.

  Dad made a point of remaining a strong presence in our lives despite the split, but the wild success of Curtis put new demands on his time. The album became a mammoth, hitting the top twenty pop and selling at a furious pace, instantly justifying his decision to go solo. It stayed on the charts for months, and by April of 1971, Curtis would take the top slot on the R&B album chart. “It just wasn’t my plan,” Dad said. “I thought I’d go home and be a businessman. I guess it just hit me by surprise. Of course, we were very serious towards the recording and the music and I hoped we’d maybe sell 25,000—50,000 albums, which, of course, would have been an asset to help the company. But I guess I just didn’t realize that we did have so many beautiful people out there.”

  That such a race-conscious album did so well on the pop chart showed the power of music to change attitudes, and it showed my father that the masses were ready to hear even the hardest truths. But racism in radio still prevailed. At the same time as Curtis’s rise, a white singer named Brian Hyland cut a version of “Gypsy Woman” that sold three million copies, outselling the Impressions’ original nearly ten times over and rising far higher on the pop charts. It was a story almost as old as recorded music—white artists made the money even when black artists made the songs. Curtis was among the only black artists to change that story by keeping as much of his publishing as possible, which meant he made good money from Hyland’s cover, but the business was still rigged against him.

  The music business had changed for the better, though, and my father played an integral part in that change. So did Curtom and Curtis. The album also changed his image. The iconic cover photo of him sitting in his yellow chamois-cloth suit, and the gatefold images of him surrounded by me, Tracy, Sharon, and Curt Curt showed a man who had come into his own. He’d even grown a beard, further separating himself from the clean-cut look he sported with the Impressions. My father claimed he never intended to leave the Impressions forever, but Curtis showed him that Curtom now had two artists that could bring in major sales. He never looked back.

  After Curtis, the press trumpeted my father’s new direction while speculating on the permanence of his split with the Impressions. In England, where he had a devoted underground following but hadn’t yet broken on the charts, the album raised his profile. When John Abbey, founder of England’s Blues & Soul magazine, interviewed him just after the album’s release, my father spoke of his duties at Curtom as the main reason for the split. “My thoughts were that if we were to make a success of the label in the way we wanted, I would have to devote more time to the creative end of it,” he said. “So that’s why I made the decision. This way, I’m not holding the Impressions back as far as their personal appearances are concerned … You see, we are all aware that there can be no Impressions without a Curtom and so we all have to take care of business first and foremost.”

  Dad also discussed plans to jumpstart Major’s career again and to release a posthumous album on Baby Huey. Abbey ended the interview by asking, “Now, when do you expect to come to Britain?” As it turned out, John would play an instrumental role in bringing my father to Britain, even chaperoning him on his trip.

  Dad had achieved moderate success with the Impressions overseas, but with John’s help, he became a star there during his solo career. When he went to the United Kingdom after Curtis, he didn’t go on tour per se. “What we did in the UK was more promotional,” John says. “Back in those days, black music was only just catching on over there in Europe.”

  Even with only a few appearances, Dad’s popularity skyrocketed as European fans thrilled to his live show. “Move On Up” soon became his first hit overseas, reaching number twelve on the British chart. As John recalls, “Him being there, in my opinion, was the thing that pushed that track over. But initially, it was because of the music, rather than the lyrics. It was quite danceable. Then people started to pick up on some of the lyrics, and I think it took him to a new place. He found a new kind of audience. He found a broader audience. It wasn’t people who just cared about R&B music. I think he found people that respected the poetry value, the lyrical value, the message he was trying to get across.”

  Spending so much time together traveling through the United Kingdom, my father kindled a friendship with John that would last until the end of his life. During that time, John learned the intricacies of Curtis’s personality. “It was misleading sometimes,” John says, “because he was always so quiet and laid-back, a lot of people didn’t realize the sort of passion that was actually running through his blood. He was much, much deeper than I think people even realized. When you read his lyrics, you can see right there. This is not your everyday guy.”

  Watching him work, John came up with a nickname that followed Curtis for the rest of his life—the Gentle Genius. “He was a very genuinely kind man,” John says. “I’m not going to lie and say I agreed with everything he did in all the years that we worked together. There were lots of times that we saw things differently. But there was never any animosity. He was always willing to listen to what you said, even if he disagreed with it. There was an aggressive side to him, and sometimes you may be having a passive conversation with him and laced inside that passiveness, there was an aggression there. He knew how to bite. But I didn’t really get to see that side of him too much because I was on his team.”

  The side of my father John did see knew how to charm and disarm. For all his loner tendencies, Dad had no problem amping up his personality when needed. He could sparkle as well as he could sulk. In public, he often seemed like the star of one of those old E. F. Hutton commercials, everyone in the room crowding around him just to see what he’d say next. People loved him, and he loved them back. He felt more confident than ever.

  As 1970 limped toward its merciful end, my parents worked out the details of their split. “[Curtis] wanted me to move into an apartment and I told him he has got to be out of his mind,” my mother says. “He said, ‘Well, you were raised in an apartment and so was I.’ I said, ‘Yes that’s because our parents couldn’t do anything, but we can do better. And my children are going to be raised in a house.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t want to get you another house. And I said, ‘Well, I’m not moving [to an apartment]. Because my children are going be in a house.’”

  Finally, my father agreed to get another house, buying a nice little place at 9121 South Luella. He also bought a three-flat house at 9225 South Cregier Avenue, just down the way from our new house, where he lived in the basement apartment. He decked it out with a waterbed, some funky artwork on the walls, and thick shag carpeting. Aunt Judy moved into the second floor, and Marion moved into the top floor. The neighborhood at that point had become mostly black, as white flight changed Chicago’s complexion. Carl Davis lived on the opposite corner, and Mr. Cub himself, Ernie Banks, lived down the street.

  Living so close to my father meant we saw him often.
All we had to do was ride our bikes a few blocks to his house. When he wasn’t on the road, we spent many weekends with him. That proximity also made it difficult for my parents’ relationship to end, and they’d go back and forth for the next two years.

  Still, their split surprised no one—except maybe my father. Even as a child, I couldn’t understand how they got together in the first place. They possessed opposite personalities. My father was reclusive and seemed to prefer submissive women—another area in which he demanded control. My mother is outgoing, outspoken, and anything but submissive.

  Perhaps their insecurities drew them together. In Diane, my father had a woman so beautiful she was offered modeling gigs, which might have calmed parts of him that still heard echoes of “Smut” in his mind. In Curtis, my mother had a man who earned good money and took care of her, which might have calmed the part of her that still feared she’d never escape her childhood in the ghetto. If these things brought them together, though, they couldn’t keep them together.

  As Curtis reverberated around the world, Dad’s influence echoed again from Jamaica when Bob Marley and the Wailers released Soul Rebels, their first record with international distribution. The Impressions had followed Marley’s career with great interest. “They were calling them the ‘Jamaican Impressions,’ and it was a very big compliment for us,” Sam said. “Of course we knew things that he was doing. New music; that’s the only way we related to Bob was through music.” With Soul Rebels, Marley and the Wailers seemed closer than ever to breaking out on the world stage. They wore their influences on their sleeves—the song “Rebel’s Hop,” for instance, featured the Wailers mixing together snippets of popular American R&B, including the Impressions’ “Keep On Moving” and the Temptations’ “Cloud Nine.”

  At the same time, Dad rehearsed a new band for a tour that would include a jaunt through Europe, with John Abbey’s help, and a show at New York’s Bitter End. To escape the Chicago winter and the Hawk—and the bitter cold of a failed relationship—he brought the band to the house in Atlanta he’d bought in 1968. It was a nice place with a swimming pool out back. The whole thing felt like a big sleepover party—just my father, Craig, Henry, Lucky, and a new drummer named Tyrone McCullen, hanging around the house jamming.

  They worked on old Impressions’ material, learned several songs off Curtis, and fleshed out a few new ideas my father brought in, including the excellent cuts “I Plan to Stay a Believer” and “Stone Junkie,” which he’d written in the midst of a doughnut binge. “Me and [Marv] were driving into Chicago eating a box of glazed doughnuts,” he said. “I don’t know how we got hooked on ’em … We got into a conversation about junkies, and before we got downtown, I had written ‘Stone Junkie.’” My father often said every conversation could end up as a song, and “Stone Junkie” showed just how true that was. He didn’t need much. Just a word or two, and his imagination would set off running.

  As the year turned, he told the guys why they were rehearsing so much. “We’re going to cut a live album,” he said. He made the decision after talking to Marv and Neil Bogart, who worked for Buddah, and realizing the Bitter End would make a great place to tape. Craig reacted with apprehension. “For real?” he said. “Man, I don’t even know the names of these songs.” My father reassured him. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I might not even know them myself, but let’s go do this.”

  Craig still felt nervous. The band had never performed together, and now they learned their first performance would appear on a live album. That was my father, though. He’d get an idea and have to do it now. Otherwise, his inner Gemini would kick in, and he’d change his mind.

  The camaraderie in the band kept everyone’s spirits high as they arrived in New York in January 1971 to find the Big Apple frozen and frigid. The youthful exuberance of the rehearsals followed them to Greenwich Village, and though winter had hit with particular severity, it didn’t stop Craig from taking on an ice-cream challenge. The Bitter End served enormous ice-cream sundaes meant for two or more people. Craig boasted he could eat one by himself, so the club’s management offered him a deal: if he could finish a sundae by himself, he could eat free for the group’s three-night run. “Curt, watch this,” Craig said. He proceeded to eat several sundaes, gorging himself on sugar. Those were the kinds of antics that made touring bearable. It impressed my father so much, he mentioned it when introducing the band, and it made the final pressing of the album.

  They gave twelve performances at the Bitter End, from which my father put the album together. “We were fortunate enough to find a studio that knew what they were doing,” he said, “and it was really as though we weren’t recording at all—until you walked out of the place and saw this thing that looked to me like a little milk truck.” The studio they found was none other than Hendrix’s brainchild, Electric Lady Studios. After the recording, Dad edited the tapes with Hendrix’s old engineer, Eddie Kramer.

  A live album is meant to capture an experience that is impossible to capture, because while the music can be recorded, the magic of seeing a concert in person cannot. Perhaps because the Bitter End is the size of a matchbox, or perhaps because the crowd each night was riveted to the music, or perhaps because the band shared such a tight bond, or perhaps for some indefinable, mysterious reason, Curtis/Live! succeeds in a way few live albums do. Embedded in the grooves on the record is the feeling the listener is sitting at one of the little wooden tables amid the ninety or so people in the mixed-race audience, watching the band on the soapbox-sized stage.

  The album kicks off with “Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey),” which had taken on new life in the two years since the Impressions cut it. My father’s phrasing is funkier, looser, and he takes the song a step further than he did with the Impressions. On the original version, he sang, “I’m gonna say it loud / I’m just as proud as the brothers too.” Now, he puts extra muscle in it, singing, “I got to say it loud / I want to say it loud / I got to say it loud / I’m black and I’m proud.” In the intimate setting, the crowd’s delighted reaction is palpable.

  Next, my father eases into the deep groove of “I Plan to Stay a Believer,” which features heavy lyrics like “Why don’t you look around? / Haven’t you found that the judgment day is already in play for the black / And now come time for the ofay?” He had now brought three racial slurs into pop music’s lexicon on his first two albums—“nigger,” “cracker,” and “ofay.” After singing a verse about the American Indian civil rights movement, which had just flowered, he ended with more excellent wordplay:

  We’re over twenty million strong

  And it wouldn’t take long to save the ghetto child

  If we’d get off our ass, ten dollars a man yearly, think awhile

  Twenty million times ten would surely then set all brothers free

  What congregation with better relations

  Would demand more respect from society?

  The crowd applauded this formula, even though some album reviews singled out that line as symptomatic of my father’s downfall as a writer (today we’d call such people haters).

  For his part, he explained the change in his lyrics like this: “Lately my lyrics have been more conscious of surroundings, of minorities. They’re designed to try to motivate minority groups, to make them keep on pushing and see that they do belong … Right now, there’s a growing audience of all kinds of people looking for music like that. They want to get down to some heavier music that relates to actual happenings in the world.”

  After “I Plan to Stay a Believer,” the band kicks into “We’re a Winner.” The song injects crackling energy into the crowd, which replaces the missing Impressions, supplying backing vocals on the chorus. Through the people clapping, hollering, shouting, cheering, and testifying, it’s easy to tell how much my father’s music meant to his audience and how deeply they felt his message.

  Then, in the middle of the song, he breaks it down. “You know, you might recall reading in your Jet and Johnson
publications, a whole lot of stations didn’t want to play that particular recording—‘We’re a Winner.’ Can you imagine such a thing? Well, I would say, as I’m sure most of you would say, ‘We don’t give a damn, we’re a winner anyway.’ Right on?”

  Met with cries of “Right on!” and “Preach, baby!” my father feels the audience. “We got a little strength out there tonight,” he says, laughing. “Putting the fire under us. Outta sight.” Then, he sings the original version of the song, the one Johnny made him change in the studio because of its incendiary lyrics. “We have just another version we’d like to lay to you about here,” he says, “believing very strongly in equality and freedom for all, and especially we people who are darker than blue. We’d like to just lay another version to you, trying not to offend anyone but basically telling it like it is.”

  If radio stations didn’t want to play the song in 1968, the live version might still be considered too risqué for radio today. To the already political lyrics he adds the original lines “No more tears do we cry / The black boy done dried his eyes,” and, “There’ll be no more Uncle Tom / At last that blessed day has come.” Radio might not have been with him, but the crowd was there one hundred percent.

  Curtis/Live! dropped in May 1971, a month after Curtis took the top spot on the R&B charts. It spent thirty-eight weeks in the top one hundred pop, hit number three R&B, and created renewed interest in Curtis. Critical reception was mixed, many writers complaining my father didn’t sound as good without the Impressions, but time has rightly judged the album a classic.

  One complaint voiced by many critics deserves special note—the claim my father’s voice sounded thin in comparison with the new music. Of course, it would have been impossible for him alone to equal the power of a three-man group. But what the critics mistakenly bemoaned was in fact a refining of his vocal style. It takes a mature artist, a master, to understand that sometimes the best way to make something louder is to make it quieter. My father used the thinness of his voice, the imperfections, the subtle warbles, to draw the listener closer. By pulling back, he invited his audience to lean in and pay intimate attention to what he said. It worked because his words were so powerful, so uncompromising, so true. If the audience missed the Impressions, they didn’t show it. With two blockbuster albums in the span of one year, Curtis was undoubtedly a solo artist.