Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 1: 1958-1971

It's been a while, but here's another major artist for my Covered series. To refresh your memory, this series highlights important songwriters, but only with cover versions of their songs, not versions they did themselves. Curtis Mayfield was a very successful musician and lead vocalist, first as part of the Impressions in the 1960s and then on his own from the 1970s until his death in 1999. But he had many successes writing songs for others. In fact, he was kind of a one man Motown, writing and producing tons of hits for others, and eventually having a record company of his own. 

I found four albums worth of cover material from him. They're a mix of covers that he wrote for others and covers of the songs that he made famous with his own versions. Note that if you look at any given volume, you might think that some key songs are missing. But this is ordered chronologically by the year the cover versions were done, and some of the ones I chose didn't come out until long after the song was first released.

This album largely overlaps with his years as a member of the Impressions, which lasted from 1956 until 1970. He wrote and sang lead on virtually everything they did, while they had a long series of hit singles. About the only key hit single not included in this series is "Amen," because Mayfield didn't write that one. The one exception to him singing lead on their hits is their very first hit, "For Your Precious Love" in 1958. Jerry Butler sang lead with Mayfield being one of the backing singers. But Butler left shortly after that for a long and successful solo career. I've included that song here even though Mayfield was part of the group at the time because he didn't sing lead on it.

Even as he was having great success with the Impressions, he was writing many more songs for others. Such big hits included "He Will Break Your Heart" by Jerry Butler, "Mama Didn't Lie" by Jan Bradley, "The Monkey Time" and "Um Um Um Um Um Um," both by Major Lance. Frankly, he had many, many more songs he wrote for others. But most of them were just okay, in my opinion, so I didn't include that many. Not surprisingly, he saved the best for himself and his group at the time, the Impressions.

I'm not going to say much more about his life and career. So if you want to read more, here' s the Wikipedia page on him:

Curtis Mayfield - Wikipedia 

This album is 48 minutes long. The three other albums in the series have similar lengths.

01 For Your Precious Love (Jerry Butler & the Impressions)
02 He Will Break Your Heart (Jerry Butler)
03 Mama Didn't Lie (Jan Bradley)
04 The Monkey Time (Major Lance)
05 You Must Believe Me (Don Covay)
06 Um Um Um Um Um Um (Major Lance)
07 Woman's Got Soul (Joe Williams)
08 Queen Majesty (Techniques)
09 Girls Are Out to Get You (Fascinations)
10 I'm the One Who Loves You (Five Stairsteps)
11 Man's Temptation (Al Kooper & Michael Bloomfield)
12 I Thank You Baby (Donny Hathaway & June Conquest)
13 Choice of Colors (Della Reese)
14 Keep On Moving (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
15 Gypsy Woman (Brian Hyland)
16 Mighty Mighty [Spade and Whitey] (Alexis Korner)
17 Hard Times (Baby Huey)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181031/COVRDCrtisMyfild1958-1971Volum1_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/46omwnNZ

Typically, I have a really hard time finding color photos of these songwriters early in their careers. That was the case here. But I managed to find a good color photo of him off one of the earliest Impressions album covers (from around 1960, if I recall correctly). But I had to make some edits. I cropped the group photo to focus on him, and then edited out the background and other band members, since that stuff was distracting. Also, his eyes were looking to the side, so I edited them to hopefully make it look like he's staring straight ahead.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.