Curtis Mayfield -

Curtis Live!

Posted: September 18th, 2008

Date: 1971
Release: Rhino #79933
Cover Art: view / download
Buy the Album

Some artists did little more than play near-replicas of their studio tracks in concert. But, as we all know, live shows are the true measure of a musicians’ ability to improvise and create on the spot. Curtis, like his disciple Jimi Hendrix, certainly knew how to transform a tune into a vehicle for soul searing improvisation. Curtis knew how to take you higher when he took to the stage.

This gem of the early 70s is funky, jamming, political, and intimate. Playing to a small but incredibly in tune crowd at Greenwich Village’s Bitter End club, Curtis is given a chance to really stretch and expand. “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” Mayfield’s still relevant commentary on black on black violence and disunity, is a grooving political tract with power to rival Gil Scott-Heron‘s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

Mayfield’s bleak vision of Black America’s future shock was nearly prophetic, as he observed “the joker in the street/loving one brother and killing the other/when the time comes, and we are really free/they’ll be no brothers left, you’ll see.” I know of no other recording that better taps into the current of 60s activism and self-empowerment, encouraging us to get up, get into it, and get involved, regardless of the fact that “everybody keeps saying, don’t worry.”

Innovative in its funk, Curtis draws upon elements from his contemporaries, James Brown and Sly Stone, synthesizing them into his own distinct brand of groove. His band is as sympathetic and in tune as is the audience. The bass sound is fat and way up in the mix, where you want it to be. After hearing percussionist Master Henry Gibson step out, you’ll understand why Curtis sings, “we don’t need no music, we got conga!”

With the exception of the slightly schmaltz cover of “We’ve only Just Begun,” this is an album you can play all the way through. Perhaps the greatest Curtis recording currently available.