10 Best Curtis Mayfield Solo Songs

Curtis Lee Mayfield started his recording career in the 1950s. He was a member of The Impressions, whose first single, ‘For Your Precious Love’, was released in 1958. He emerged as a songwriter in the 1960s with hits like ‘People Get Ready’ and ‘Gypsy Woman’.

But it’s his solo career in the early 1970s that he’s perhaps best known for. He enjoyed acclaimed albums like 1970’s Curtis and 1972’s Super Fly. His falsetto voice and funky wah-wah guitar (tuned to the black keys of a piano) were distinctive musical elements. His lyrics were often socially conscious, but his perspective promoted love and inclusivity.

After the mid-1970s, Mayfield had to change his style to disco, due to changing musical fashions. This list is entirely taken from the 1970-1975 prime of his solo career. Apologies to fans of ‘Super Fly’ and ‘Right On For the Darkness’, two great tracks I couldn’t fit.

10 Best Curtis Mayfield Songs

#10 Pusherman

from Super Fly, 1972

Chatanooga-born bassist Joseph “Lucky” Scott was perhaps Mayfield’s most important collaborator during the early 1970s. He served as Mayfield’s musical director, and his basslines were often at the centre of the arrangements.

‘Pusherman’, from the 1972 Super Fly soundtrack, is a great example. Over a sleazy bassline, Mayfield plays the part of a sleazy drug dealer. “Want some coke? Have some weed/You know me, I’m your friend.”

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#9 The Makings Of You

from Curtis, 1970

Mayfield’s debut is beloved for its funky epics. But this sweet, deceptively complex song, tucked away in the depths of the second side, is also a highlight. It starts as a love song but broadens its focus as it goes on. “The love of all mankind/should reflect some sign of these words.”

It’s also reprised on Mayfield’s essential 1971 Curtis/Live.

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#8 Billy Jack

from There’s No Place Like America Today, 1975

On ‘Billy Jack’, Mayfield presents a darker vision of America. The cover photo is based on a 1937 monochrome photograph by Margaret Bourke-White, titled At the Time of the Louisville Flood.

I always assumed the title ‘Billy Jack’ was an inversion of Martha and the Vandellas’ ‘Jimmy Mack’. It’s a plea for reducing inner-city gun violence, with lines like “can’t be no fun, can’t be no fun/To be shot, shot with a hand gun”.

‘Billy Jack’ has all the ingredients of Mayfield’s other funky, epic album openers. But appropriately, most of the joy is drained from it.

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#7 So You Don’t Love Me

from Got To Find A Way, 1974

Got to Find a Way feels like a rebound after the lacklustre Sweet Exorcist. It concentrates on personal relationships but with funky arrangements.

Despite the emphasis on funk, the most memorable song is the yearning ballad ‘So You Don’t Love Me’. There’s a great moment with a minute to run. All the other instruments drop out, leaving a solitary synth to ascend, before they come back for a gorgeous climax.

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#6 No Thing On Me (Cocaine Song)

from Super Fly, 1972

Mayfield is in character for much of Super Fly, singing about a murky world of drug dealers. Nothing On Me is the one song where he’s able to be himself, an optimistic story of fresh beginnings.

I’m so glad I’ve got my own
So glad that I can see
My life’s a natural high
The man can’t put no thing on me

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#5 Back to the World

from Back to the World, 1973

Ever compassionate, Mayfield wrote ‘Back to the World’ about the tough time that Vietnam vets faced adapting to life back home. It’s more sedate than his other album-opening funk epics, but it’s gorgeous and layered.

Here’s Rolling Stone’s bizarre contemporary review of the album.

Here’s my plot: Our hero is a black sergeant just come “Back to the World” (GI lingo for any place but Vietnam and also the title out of this record). In Nam he was both a high-living TooDoo coke dealer and a POW. Back on the South Side he goes to see his mom and checks out the folks getting cut on the street, and ma tells him that things ain’t changed — “In these city streets, everywhere you got to be careful/Where you move your feet and how you part your hair.” He goes out and tries to get some kind of honest gig but Nixon conspires to have the New York banks raise the prime lending rate so black vets can’t start businesses. In desperation he manages to obtain the official Super Fly cocaine franchise for Illinois. Generally pissed, he also forms a band from disaffected fellow vets and sings the fine title tune.

Stephen Davis, Rolling Stone, 1973

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#4 Get Down

from Roots, 1971
Mayfield was amazing at lengthy funk excursions. He was backed by an ace band, with Joseph “Lucky” Scott on bass, Craig McMullen on drums, Master Henry Gibson on percussion, and Tyrone McCullen on drums.

I didn’t realise that ‘Get Down’ was a reference to a specific dance move with cultural significance – I’ll let Wikipedia explain:

In Gahu choreography, often dancers move counterclockwise in a circle of alternating men and women; their performance includes “long passages of a lightly bouncy basic ‘step’ leavened with brief ‘get down’ sections in which the dancers lower their center of weight and move with intensified strength and quickness.” – Wikipedia

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#3 Freddie’s Dead

from Super Fly, 1972

‘Freddie’s Dead’ was the first single from Super Fly. It laments Fat Freddie, a character in the movie who was run over by a car.

Mayfield was never a great singer as his contemporaries like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. But he’s great here, his falsetto sounding menacing on the opening “hey hey”. There’s a great string arrangement too, making the song richer without taking the edge off it.

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#2 (Don’t Worry) If There Is A Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go

from Curtis, 1970

Much of Mayfield’s work is affirming and warm, but ‘If There Is A Hell Below’ is dark and foreboding. It warns of worsening conditions in America’s inner cities and tensions boiling in race relations.

It starts with a frightening commendation of the Biblical book of Revelation. Mayfield then shouts “Sisters! Niggers! Whiteys! Jews! Crackers!”. It’s not a cry for unity, but a proclamation that everyone’s doomed. There’s a rich audio stew, with strings and Mayfield’s wah-wah guitar.

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#1 Move On Up

from Curtis, 1970

‘(Don’t Worry) If There Is A Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go’ starts side one of Mayfield’s solo debut in a menacing fashion. Its counterpart on side one of the album is much more inviting.

Mayfield’s falsetto is uplifting, backed by an ebullient horn section, a killer bassline, and a funky bed of drums and percussion.

Arsenal football club employs ‘Move On Up’ as a post-game anthem. Joe Biden used it at the end of his 2020 presidential campaign speeches.

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