Traveling Soul (49 page)

In 1976, the Impressions released
Loving Power
, which didn't do much. Then they quit Curtom. Curtis had never been further from his old group, but he was too busy to dwell on it. After the Impressions left, he worked on finishing the second movie project he'd taken on the year before
—Sparkle
. He'd already written and recorded the entire album with his voice as a placeholder. “I was writing the songs not knowing really who was going to do them,” he said. “I didn't know really until two or three weeks before we released the album who was going to sing it.”

What he didn't say was that someone had already sung it—the film's cast, including the future costar of
Miami Vice
, Philip Michael Thomas. Understandably, the cast members reacted with dismay when they heard their version of the soundtrack was scrapped because Curtis didn't like it. Lonette McKee, one of the female leads, said, “The next thing I knew, Curtis Mayfield was giving an interview saying he couldn't understand how they could cast unknowns … He made it hard, deliberately setting the keys of the songs in uncomfortable registers for all of us.”

Whether or not that accusation was true, it's hard to blame my father for making the switch. At the end of 1975, Atlantic Records' in-house legend, Ahmet Ertegun, approached Dad about working with Aretha Franklin. Like Curtis, the Queen of Soul had recently released a string of
unsuccessful albums. She listened to the music he'd written for
Sparkle
and jumped on board. “I'd never gotten into Aretha until this,” Dad said. “I was very pleased with my music and the contents even before I knew she was going to do it. And her singing just brought everything together.”

Recording only took five days because, as Franklin recalled, “[Curtis] likes to work fast.” Also, they worked well together. “He pretty much let me have a free hand,” she said. “Our only real disagreement was over one note—he wanted me to sing one way, but I had another way in mind. So we recorded both versions, and what you hear on the album is his concept. He was the producer, so I let him produce.” Even when producing a woman who many believe to be the greatest singer of all time, my father wouldn't relinquish control.

The
Sparkle
soundtrack hit number one R&B, as did the single “Something He Can Feel.” The album went gold that year, proving Dad's music could still captivate the music world. Tracy recalls him saying he liked
Sparkle
best out of all the albums he'd made, but it continued a frustrating trend—even though his music remained strong, it seemed he could only succeed when someone else sang his songs.

With his next solo album,
Give, Get, Take and Have
, he sought to break that trend. He wrote a batch of songs aimed at the pop charts, even giving a brief nod to the disco craze on “Party Night.” That song in particular was a microcosm of the forces directing his songwriting. It showed a man torn between his heart and commercialism, between the music he loved and the music that was currently popular. As a result, the album doesn't quite cohere despite excellent songs like “In Your Arms Again,” “This Love Is Sweet,” and “P.S. I Love You.” The only bright spot commercially was that the single, “Only You Babe,” hit number eight R&B.

Give, Get, Take and Have
was his worst-selling solo album yet, and another critical failure. With the pressure of running Curtom taking up more mental space than ever, and with his family life deteriorating from increasing solitude and probable drug use, he simply didn't have time to construct an album as seamless and powerful as
Curtis
or
Super Fly
.
Creating a work of art takes absolute focus, ample time, and unrelenting determination. My father only had the latter. He'd always said he wanted his music to be about more than “shaking your shaggy shaggy.” He wanted to give people something to think about while they danced. But several of the songs on
Give, Get, Take and Have
feature some permutation of the phrase “shake it,” with nothing more serious as a counterbalance. It seemed he was giving in.

Perhaps he had to. On top of dicso's prominence, other factors played into Curtis's continued decline, and Marv spoke candidly about them in a 1976 interview with
Blues & Soul
magazine. One was the racism still prevalent in radio programming. “They tell you, go across town and get me a hit black record and we'll listen,” Marv said.

Then you get them a hit black record and they'll tell you it's too black. I've heard that expression, “too black,” for years. I would love for a pop station to actually explain to me what that means…. Maybe if I printed our lacquers white—they'd play them. It affects your dollars, it affects your growth. Maybe if we had artists crossing over to the mass white market, we'd be signing rock acts as well. It limits us, truthfully. I think it's a disgusting situation. I'll give you an example: we just had the number one R&B record in the country with “Something He Can Feel.” It never crossed over to the white market. It sold 800,000 singles and the album's nearly platinum.

Also, because he was either busy in the studio or locked in his room at home, he hadn't toured much since
Super Fly
. “Curtis hasn't been out for three years and I think his sales have suffered as a result,” Marv said. “He felt that after touring for years, he wanted to see his children grow up…. I know in '77 he's going to tour. It hurts any artists not to tour. It's a commitment that the artists have to their fans.” My father blamed it on his workload, saying, “I'm usually working on one situation or another—and that's why I haven't been on the road as an artist, more or less.”

Though he'd grown tired of touring, the road was always a source of inspiration. From “He Will Break Your Heart” to “It's All Right,” Dad wrote some of his greatest songs sitting in a car on tour, guitar resting in his lap. That source of inspiration had vanished in recent years.

Still, he felt optimistic. “I'd like to think that this company can become another Motown, as famous as all the things that Berry Gordy did for his company,” he said. Marv echoed that statement, saying, “He's thirty-four and has spent seventeen years on the charts. His contribution to black music is beyond comprehension. His contribution to music throughout the world is the same. So I don't look at Curtom as ‘What are we doing today'—I look at it as what are we doing today
and tomorrow
.”

Dad had multiple plans for tomorrow, including two new film soundtrack projects and a new solo album. By this point, he had pushed himself dangerously close to burnout, yet he didn't rest for a moment. The first of the two films he scored,
Short Eyes
, was based on a popular Broadway play of the same name, and it dealt with one of the few issues of black life my father still hadn't touched—prison. The term “short eyes” was prison slang for a pedophile, and the movie followed a man accused of pedophilia as he made his way through the complex social structure of prison life.

Short Eyes
was my father's fifth soundtrack, but unlike his other soundtrack work, this time he invested a good deal of money in the film. He also landed his first dramatic role as Pappy, a wizened old prisoner who doles out advice and sings “Do Do Wap Is Strong in Here” from the soundtrack. With so much of Curtom's money on the line, my father needed the movie to succeed as much as he needed the soundtrack to succeed. Neither did.

Perhaps the subject matter was too heavy for the times. “We got great recognition and real good write-ups,” Dad said. “However, it was probably too real. When we did it, it was during the times of escapism and
Star Wars
.” The
New York Times
gave the movie a breathless review, saying it was “eloquently adapted” from the play. The review even praised
Dad's turn on the big screen—“Curtis Mayfield, the singer and composer, makes a brief, very effective appearance as an older prisoner who wears ‘granny' glasses and believes there should be some decency even among people fighting to hang on to the bottom rung of the ladder.”

Still, the movie flopped. Though the soundtrack was full of Curtis's most incisive social commentary since
Super Fly
, it was also a disaster, only reaching number fifty-nine on the R&B chart. Again, the failure didn't make much sense for either project. It showed how critical approbation and artistic quality don't guarantee commercial success.

My father felt proud of the album, especially the cut “Do Do Wap Is Strong in Here.” Many critics count it as among his best songs—impossibly funky and lyrically dazzling. Personally, I didn't like it as a kid; it didn't seem radio friendly to me. His response when I told him that: “Don't listen to it, then.” The album also features “Back Against the Wall,” a heartbreaking look at prison life that pulls from a deep gospel well, while cuts like “Need Someone to Love” and “A Heavy Dude” lived up to his usual standard of quality. But,
Short Eyes
broke the spell he'd cast on his fans over the course of two decades. With the failure of the movie and soundtrack, my father's reign in the music world suffered a mortal blow.

Short Eyes
almost bankrupted Curtom, putting extra pressure on Dad to come up with a hit. His second movie soundtrack that year,
A Piece of the Action
, didn't provide it. The album served as an interesting comparison to
Let's Do It Again
, as Mavis Staples sang the songs (this time by herself) and the movie starred Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby once again. “I remember when Curtis called me to work on
A Piece of the Action
,” Mavis said. “He'd run into some kind of trouble, and he was on a tight deadline. So he called and said, ‘Mavis, I'm in a bind,' and I said, ‘Okay, Curtis, I'm on the way.' All of the musicians ended up spending the night in the studio, sleeping over two nights to get the album done.”

The trouble Mavis referred to involved Roberta Flack, whom my father first hired to sing the songs. She came into the Curtom studio to record but couldn't produce the sound he wanted. Tracy, who watched
the scene unfold from the control booth, recalls, “I remember Dad giving her instructions, and he wasn't really feeling her. She asked for the lights to be turned out and she's singing, and you couldn't see anything, you could just hear her voice. She wanted it totally pitch black out there, I guess to maybe get into the mood, but he still wasn't satisfied. She's more of a mellow, precise intonation type of singer. He wanted that soul and that grit. Sometimes he could be very hard to please, very hard to please.”

Dad had always been that way, and he remained that way, as Tracy would learn when he went on tour with him years later. “He would get upset, like, ‘You better deliver right away. You ain't got two, three minutes. I want to hear it right now,'” Tracy says.

You had to be doing something for him. Because he would let you know. He would say, “Hey, cat. That ain't happening. This is what you need to be doing.” Just like that. He didn't pull no punches. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted at all times, and he heard very well what was going on. And he would stop you or stop the music. He would put his hand out. He wasn't a very mean person, very pleasant even when being decisive of what he wanted. But he would be very direct, and say, “Hey, that ain't happening.”

Despite getting exactly what he wanted out of Mavis,
A Piece of the Action
failed. Yet again, my father churned out excellent soul music in a disco-dominated world. Two months later,
Saturday Night Fever
hit theaters, and with it came the Bee Gees' mammoth soundtrack, which reigned atop the
Billboard
album chart for twenty-four straight weeks and sold more than fifteen million copies. At that point, Marv's exhortations to make a disco record became more powerful, but my father wasn't ready to relent. Instead, he recorded
Never Say You Can't Survive
, a collection of soulful love songs that sounded pleasant enough but went nowhere on the charts. Now, he had another problem—moneymen at Warner Brothers began turning the screws, tired of investing in product that didn't sell.