MusicWarship

There’s a lot to love about Curtis Mayfield.

He would’ve been a cool guy - that’s cool in the 70s-90s sense, when the word wasn’t used exclusively in cringe-inducing youth-targeted advertisements - even if he wasn’t a musician, with his flat taxi driver cap, tight-fitted blazers, close-cut beard and round glasses. It just so happened that he backed up the aesthetic with a ridiculously fine-tuned ear for soul melodies and tight rhythms.

While others in his time spoke in abstract Dylan rorts, or lazy liberal sentiment, Mayfield wrote about the junkies he saw in dirty streets, and the unequal America he saw around him. And, no matter wrote he wrote about, you could dance to it.

In 1969, Mayfield signed Baby Huey (born James Ramey) - a fellow Chicago native, and a big man with a big voice - to his Curtom label. Unfortunately, Huey’s sole album would be posthumous, as he was found dead in 1970 at the age of 26, the victim of a heroin overdose.

Before his death, Baby Huey recorded a prime Mayfield cut that Curtis wouldn’t record until five years later:

MP3: Baby Huey - “Hard Times” (from Living Legend, 1970).

MP3: Curtis Mayfield - “Hard Times” (from There’s No Place Like America Today, 1975).

The swagger built into so many Curtis tracks makes him a favourite for hip-hop producers. Egg Man, produced by the Dust Brothers, takes the three note bass from Superfly, while Kanye West’s sublime Touch The Sky slows down the horn line from Move On Up:

MP3: Beastie Boys - “Egg Man” (from Paul’s Boutique, 1989).

MP3: Curtis Mayfield - “Superfly” (from Superfly, 1973).

MP3: Kanye West - “Touch The Sky” (from Late Registration, 2005).

MP3: Curtis Mayfield - “Move On Up” (from Curtis, 1970).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 2:41 am and is filed under Compare & Contrast, Kanye West, Rap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.