Traveling Soul (35 page)

“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
Cur
tis. 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.”