Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield: Where He's Been And Where He's Going

Profile and Interview by Roger St. Pierre, Let It Rock, October 1972

AFTER SUCH COMMITTED, socially conscious compositions as 'This Is My Country', 'Mighty Mighty, Spade and Whitey' and 'Choice Of Colours' Curtis Mayfield believes the time ...

Curtis Mayfield: People Get Ready!

Review by Lloyd Bradley, MOJO, March 1996

THE LAST FIVE YEARS HAVE SEEN THE BOX-setting of James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Bob Marley and a fair few other giants of black ...

Curtis Mayfield: No Longer An Impression

Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, September 1970

AS EXCLUSIVELY reported in Blues & Soul some 4 months ago, Curtis Mayfield has officially left the Impressions after 12 years. When we finally tracked ...

Curtis Mayfield: Curtis; The Impressions: Check Out Your Mind

Review by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, September 1970

Curtis Mayfield: Curtis (Curtom) ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Bitter End, NYC

Live Review by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, February 1971

Curtis Mayfield's Solo Debut ...

The Fascinations

Profile and Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, July 1971

IT'S ONE of the strange things about the music world when a record that is five years old and is making its third bid for ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Gentle Genius

Profile and Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, July 1971

FEW – IF ANY – people have contributed as much to the progression of what is generally regarded as Soul music as has Curtis Mayfield, ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Speakeasy, London

Live Review by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, July 1971

THE ALL-too-brief, spur-of-the-moment appearance of Curtis Mayfield at London's Speakeasy club must surely rank as a historic event in the history of soul music in ...

Curtis Mayfield

Profile and Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, September 1971

IT IS, indeed, very rare for an American artist to make a short visit to this country and immediately score a hit single in the ...

Curtis Mayfield: Soul Music's Elusive Dynamo

Interview by Phil Symes, Disc and Music Echo, December 1971

CURTIS MAYFIELD is a hard man to catch these days. If he's not locked away in a studio all night recording himself, the Impressions, or ...

Isaac Hayes' Black Moses and other albums

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, 1972

TO CLAIM to have found a representative selection of black music on four records is patently absurd, but as a random cross-section of what’s approximately ...

Curtis Mayfield, Bloodstone: Rainbow Theatre, London

Live Review by Roger St. Pierre, NME, January 1972

WITH THE Curtis Mayfield/Bloodstone show, the Rainbow Theatre proved conclusively that the Albert Hall has lost its place as the capital city of bad acoustics. ...

Curtis Mayfield

Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, February 1972

SINCE EMERGING as an important solo entertainer, Curtis Mayfield has also emerged as the president of a successful record company, due mainly to his basic ...

Curtis Mayfield In The Talk-In

Interview by Penny Valentine, Sounds, February 1972

WHEN YOU first used strings on your early work with the Impressions it was something of a breakthrough in soul music. Did you find any ...

Black Music

Comment by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, May 1973

SOMETIME LAST fall, John Percy Boyd, Mark Bethune and Michael Brown, a trio of black college students in Detroit, decided to put an end to ...

Curtis Mayfield: Back To The World (Curtom)

Review by Wayne Robins, Zoo World, July 1973

WITH ALL courtesy to the self-proclaimed Black Caesar, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly was the musical equivalent to Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather. Both were nearly as ...

Gladys Knight: Claudine (Original Soundtrack)

Review by Bob Woffinden, NME, June 1974

IT MUST have seemed a good idea. Amalgamating the talents of Buddah stablemates Gladys Knight and Curtis Mayfield for the sound-track of Claudine. ...

Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions: Big Sixteen

Review by Bob Fisher, NME, March 1975

IT'S PLEASING to see Anchor pushing out this classic compilation, as it's been unavailable for several years. It was originally issued on the old HMV ...

Curtis Mayfield: Love To The People

Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, June 1975

I ADMIT THAT I always eagerly look forward to the bi-annual interview time with Curtis Mayfield because it never quite seems like an interview. ...

Curtis Mayfield: America Today

Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, June 1975

THREE YEARS AGO, Curtis Mayfield was one of the golden boys of New Wave soul, having broken with marketing formats (The Impressions) and joined the ...

The Impressions

Profile and Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, July 1975

WITHOUT OVERSTATING the fact, you could justifiably say that The Impressions have come a long way! ...

Aretha Franklin: Sparkle (Atlantic)****

Review by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, October 1976

SUBTITLED 'Music From The Motion Picture', Sparkle is a soundtrack album, that plays like a record. It doesn't, unlike most of the genre, hang limply ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Creative Mastermind

Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, December 1976

TO TRY and describe Curtis Mayfield's enormous contribution to the music world would take far more adjectives than we have at our disposal. ...

Curtis Mayfield, Jerry Butler & The Impressions: Greek Theatre, Los Angeles

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, July 1983

FEW THINGS in this amorphous and inchoate universe are so perfect as ‘I’m So Proud’ or ‘Woman’s Got Soul’ – or very nearly any of ...

Keep On Pushing: Curtis Mayfield

Interview by Chris Salewicz, Face, The, 1985

They were still calling it ‘race music’ when Curtis Mayfield started singing in the late ‘50s. An influential and innovative artist, Mayfield gave a stirring ...

Now More Than Ever: Curtis Mayfield

Profile and Interview by Simon Witter, i-D, September 1987

Curtis Mayfield is the music world’s most talented unsigned superstar. A working musician since the age of eight, Mayfield’s inimitable work with The Impressions and ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Palomino, Los Angeles

Live Review by Don Waller, Los Angeles Times, October 1989

Mayfield Performs Cream of His Crop of Hits ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Anthology 1961-1977

Review by Joe McEwen, Rolling Stone, February 1993

CURTIS MAYFIELD and the Impressions: The Anthology, a two-CD, forty-song set, is a remarkable document. Lovingly assembled by Chicago-soul authority Robert Pruter, this collection connects ...

The Original Superfly Guy

Interview by Robert Gordon, Q, July 1993

Curtis Mayfield is a full-scale genius. First with the Impressions, and afterwards with his solo stuff, he defined, then redefined, the sound of black America. ...

No Sad Songs For Curtis Mayfield

Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Denver Post, March 1994

ANYONE CAN HAVE a paralyzing, life-diminishing accident at anytime - bad things happen to good people just as often as good things. You just accept ...

Curtis Mayfield: New World Order

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1996

SIX YEARS AFTER the freak onstage accident that paralyzed him from the neck down, Curtis Mayfield, one of soul music's true titans, makes his debut ...

Curtis Mayfield: New World Order (Warner Bros/All formats)

Review by Keith Cameron, NME, January 1997

HE SAW his people endure hard times and dedicated his life to evangelising alternative paths. He was a soul singer, a streetwise prophet, one of ...

Curtis Mayfield

Interview by Craig Werner, Goldmine, July 1997

CURTIS MAYFIELD’S voice sinks to a whisper as he recalls the lyrics from one of his greatest songs: "I’ve got my strength and it don’t ...

Curtis Mayfield: Superfly (Two-CD Special Edition)

Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, September 1998

ORIGINALLY RELEASED in 1972, Curtis Mayfield's album of music for one of the most notorious blaxploitation films of the Seventies is typically compassionate, melancholic, and ...

Curtis Mayfield - A Gently Sensitive Observer

Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, December 1998

SIX MAYFIELD albums on three CDs, from the great to the grottyCurtisGot To Find A WayRootsSweet ExorcistBack To The WorldLove ...

Curtis Mayfield

Obituary by Ben Edmonds, MOJO, March 2000

With his high, pure tenor and songs of peace, love and empowerment, Curtis Mayfield was a soul revolutionary whose influence spanned four decades. Ben Edmonds ...

Curtis Mayfield and Superfly: No Exit

Retrospective by Ben Edmonds, MOJO, June 2002

"THESE GUYS WERE LIKE outlaws, the real cowboys," says Phillip Fenty of the street characters who inspired his screenplay of Superfly. ...

Curtis Mayfield: Gangster Boogie

Retrospective and Interview by Michael A. Gonzales, Wax Poetics, December 2009

Curtis Mayfield injected his own cultural commentary into the Super Fly legacy ...