Curtis Mayfield with the Impressions - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 4-19-1974

Here's another episode of the excellent "Midnight Special" TV show. This one is hosted by soul music singer-songwriter Curtis Mayfield.

Mayfield hosted the show twice, once in 1973 and once in 1974, as well as appearing on it a few other times. I compiled his 1973 appearances into an album I've posted here already. This one mainly consists of the 1974 episode he hosted, but it has bits from three other episodes as well, one from 1974 and two from 1973.

In addition to Mayfield, the main guest here is the soul band the Impressions. From about 1960 until 1970, Mayfield was the main lead vocalist and songwriter for the Impressions. But after he left the band for a solo career, he continued to stay closely involved, producing many of their new songs, and even writing some of them. That continued collaboration can be seen here, by the fact that he was on the same episode of the Midnight Special with them twice, and performed one song with them in a 1973 episode.

The first eight tracks come from the 1974 episode mentioned in the title, broadcast on April 19, 1974. "If I Were a Child Again" comes from a February 1, 1974 episode. "Back to the World" is from a September 14, 1973 episode. (I included it here because he did another version of that song in the 1973 album I've posted from him.) 

The last five tracks, 11 through 15, come from a February 2, 1973 episode. I put those songs here even though they're closer in time to the 1973 episode I've posted from him because those involved more collaboration with the Impressions, as well as a repeat of another song ("Superfly") I posted on the other episode from him. That episode was hosted by Helen Reddy, who would go on to host the show a surprising number of times. I didn't want to bring her into this too much, so I could keep the focus on Mayfield and/or the Impressions. But she did join in singing "Amen" with Mayfield and the Impressions, a traditional gospel song that the Impressions had a hit with in 1964, when Mayfield was the band's lead singer.

In case you're curious, the other guest stars on the 1974 episode that Mayfield hosted were Gladys Knight & the Pips, Status Quo, Phil Ochs, and Sugarloaf. I already have use the Gladys Knight songs on a different album I've posted from them. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. As I often do with these episodes, I did a lot of editing to smooth the transitions between songs, usually by adding in some extra audience cheering. A couple of tracks have "[Edit]" in their titles due to extra editing. For the first one, I used MVSEP to remove the theme song and replace it with more applause. For the second one, I merged some different talking bits together from different parts of the show. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 talk by Wolfman Jack [Edit] (Curtis Mayfield)
02 If There's a Hell Below We're All Gonna Go (Curtis Mayfield)
03 talk [Edit] (Curtis Mayfield)
04 I'm a Changed Man (Impressions)
05 To Be Invisible (Curtis Mayfield)
06 People Get Ready (Impressions)
07 No Thing on Me (Curtis Mayfield)
08 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
09 If I Were a Child Again (Curtis Mayfield)
10 Back to the World (Curtis Mayfield)
11 talk (Helen Reddy & Curtis Mayfield)
12 Preacher Man (Impressions)
13 Amen (Curtis Mayfield, the Impressions & Helen Reddy)
14 Superfly (Curtis Mayfield)
15 talk (Curtis Mayfield & Wolfman Jack) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qCSgCjKs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/user/files/2Y6bw0WZFL1BUBz/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. It shows Mayfield (left), with Helen Reddy (center) and the Impressions (right).

Curtis Mayfield with Canned Heat - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-8-1973

Here's another episode of that great TV show, "Midnight Special." This one stars soul singer-songwriter Curtis Mayfield, with Canned Heat as his guest star.

One of the things I like most about the Midnight Special show was how it often had different musical acts perform together. But I never would have expected Curtis Mayfield and Canned Heat to perform a song together. Yet they did here, with show host Wolfman Jack singing on it too. And it appears to have been a song made up just for the occasion, as you can tell by the title Mayfield gave to it when he introduced it: "A Little Midnight Special Boogie on You."

At the time, Mayfield was a very big star. He had led the band the Impressions for most of the 1960s. Then as a solo star, he had a massive success with the soundtrack to the movie "Super Fly." The album went to Number One in the U.S. album chart, and actually made more money than the movie it was supporting. Two songs from it, "Superfly" and "Freddie's Dead," made the Top Ten singles chart. Then, in May 1973, Mayfield released the album "Future Shock." 

Mayfield was on the show a good number of times in 1973 and 1974, though he usually didn't play many songs each time. He hosted the show for the June 8, 1973 episode, and that makes up the bulk of the music here. He hosted it again in 1974, and that will be the focus of another album I plan on posting. But I've also worked in songs from two other episodes. "Freddie's Dead" comes from the February 23, 1973 episode. And "Future Shock" and "Right On for the Darkness" come from the September 14, 1973 episode. Between those three episodes, we get four songs from the "Future Shock" album ("Future Shock," "Right On for the Darkness," "If I Were Only a Child Again," and "Back to the World"), plus the two big hits from "Superfly."

Also, there are the Canned Heat songs. At the time, that band was on the decline. Earlier in 1973, they released their seventh album, "The New Age." It was their first one to not even make the Top 100 album chart in the U.S. One problem was that musical tastes were changing, and the band's boogie and blues was going out of style for a while. Another problem was the band was in a mess. One original member had died and two more had just left, leaving only two, plus replacements. And some band members were deep into drug addictions. 

Despite all that, they put on a good performance here. "Harley Davidson Blues" was a song from their latest album. "Let's Work Together" was one of their earlier hits. Then there's the collaborative song with Mayfield and Wolfman Jack mentioned above.

As usual with these Midnight Special albums, I had to do a lot of editing to make it flow well. I patched in extra applause to the ends of most every song, for instance. I also left out a lot of music to keep a coherent focus. In case you're curious, the other musical acts on the main episode featured here were the Spinners, Jose Feliciano, Tufano-Giammarese, Ravi Shankar, and Leroy Hutson.

This album is 34 minutes long. 

01 Superfly (Curtis Mayfield)
02 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
03 Let's Work Together (Canned Heat)
04 Freddie's Dead (Curtis Mayfield)
05 Harley Davidson Blues (Canned Heat)
06 If I Were Only a Child Again (Curtis Mayfield)
07 Back to the World (Curtis Mayfield)
08 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
09 A Little Midnight Special Boogie on You (Canned Heat, Curtis Mayfield & Wolfman Jack)
10 Future Shock (Curtis Mayfield)
11 Right On for the Darkness (Curtis Mayfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xjMHAzJK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/oLmTgxOys7sLTt1/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a YouTube video of this exact concert. From left to right: Curtis Mayfield, Bob Hite of Canned Heat, and Wolfman Jack. 

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 4: 1995-2020

Here is the fourth and last of the Covered series for soul great Curtis Mayfield.

Tragedy struck Mayfield in 1990. During a concert, some lighting equipment fell on him, paralyzing him from the neck down. Despite this, he managed to put out one more album in 1996, "New World Order," which was hailed as a musical comeback. Unfortunately, he died only three years after that, in 1999, at the relatively young age of 57.

This generally consists of covers of his songs from the 1960s and 1970s, although "Here but I'm Gone" is from his 1996 album. As one can see, his musical influence remains strong up until the present day.

There were a couple of songs I wanted to find covers for, but I couldn't find any released versions of them. Happily, I was able to find very good unreleased versions. Eric Clapton has only done "Here but I'm Gone" in concert. I was able to find a pretty good sounding version from a bootleg recorded in Osaka, Japan. And nobody at all seems to have covered "So in Love," even though it was a hit back in the 1970s. But I found a nice version done on YouTube by two artists that have put out their own records.

Although this is the end of the Curtis Mayfield Covered series, I have many, many more musicians I plan on featuring with their own Covered series.

01 We're a Winner (Mother Earth)
02 Kung Fu (Dirtbombs)
03 The Makings of You (Angie Stone)
04 Fool for You (Rory Block)
05 We Gotta Have Peace (Charlatans)
06 This Is My Country (Cyril Neville)
07 We People Who Are Darker than Blue (Sinead O'Connor)
08 Everybody Needs a Friend (Joan Osborne)
09 Here but I'm Gone (Eric Clapton with Doyle Bramhall II)
10 Talkin' about My Baby (Phil Collins)
11 Pusherman (Sheila E.)
12 So in Love (Adeaze & Tone6)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175873/COVRDCURTISM1995-2020Vlum4_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BmNadeg7

The cover art photo comes from 1995. You can see a bit of the wheelchair he is sitting in behind his head. 

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 3: 1977-1994

Here's Volume 3 of my Covered series for Curtis Mayfield. As with the others in this series, these are cover versions of songs written by Mayfield, not his own versions.

Mayfield was a big star with lots of hits in the 1960s and early 1970s, but that petered out as the 1970s continued. He lost out to changing tastes and musical styles, especially the rise of disco. However, his musical legacy was tremendous, as can be seen by the wide variety of covers.

The songs here are generally those from his most successful years of the 1960s and early 1970s. We finally get covers of some of his biggest hits, like "People Get Ready" and "Superfly."

But this isn't the last volume. There's one more that scoops up all the key songs not included so far.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Right On for the Darkness (Willie Wright)
02 Move On Up (Jam)
03 Future Shock (Herbie Hancock)
04 People Get Ready (Rod Stewart & Jeff Beck)
05 Superfly (Blow Monkeys)
06 Freddie's Dead (Fishbone)
07 I'm So Proud (Steve Cropper & Lani Groves)
08 Got a Right to Cry (Angela Strehli)
09 It's All Right (Huey Lewis & the News)
10 She Don't Let Nobody [But Me] (Chaka Demus & Pliers)
11 Billy Jack (Lenny Kravitz)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181029/COVRDCrtisMyfild1977-1994Volum3_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ndhNGU7U

The cover art photo was taken in 1981. This time, I didn't have to change anything. Even the background is as is.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program. Although there was nothing really wrong with the original, this just made it look a little better.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 2: 1971-1976

Yesterday, I posted Volume 1 in the Covered series for Curtis Mayfield. Here's Volume 2. I hope to get to Volumes 3 and 4 soon.

In 1970, Curtis Mayfield left his band, the Impressions. It wasn't that much of a change, since he did all the lead vocals, songwriting, and production for the Impressions already. But it coincided with a shift from writing mostly about romance to addressing social and political concerns more overtly than before. This culminated in his his hugely successful soundtrack from the movie "Superfly" in 1972.

You can see that shift in focus here. However, it isn't as evident as it might be, because some of the covers of his big hits from this period that I picked weren't recorded until much later, so they don't appear until Volumes 3 or 4. 

Most of the songs here were originally done by Mayfield himself. But he continued to successfully write some hit songs for others, such as "On and On," "Let's Do It Again," and "Something He Can Feel."

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 [Don't Worry] If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go (East of Underground)
02 Stone Junkie (Ruby Jones)
03 Running (Baby Huey)
04 Stop the War (Impressions)
05 Ain't No Love Lost (Patti Jo)
06 I've Been Trying (Heptones)
07 Eddie You Should Know Better (Natural Four)
08 Make Me Believe in You (Patti Jo)
09 On and On (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Let's Do It Again (Staple Singers)
11 Look into Your Heart (Aretha Franklin)
12 Something He Can Feel (Aretha Franklin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693564/COVRDCurtisM_1971-1976_Volum2_atse.zip.html

Although the early 1970s was the peak of Mayfield's popularity, I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a good color photo of him. Most of them have his head tilted this way or that, and in this series I like ones with the musician staring straight ahead. I finally found one from 1973, though I'm not happy with his hand by his head. And in this one, he was looking to the side, so I adjusted his eyes to (hopefully) make it look like he's staring straight ahead. I also removed the background because I found it distracting. If anyone knows of a better photo of him from this time, please let me know.

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.

Curtis Mayfield - Beat Club, Bremen, Germany, 1-19-1972

I'm a big fan of soul music from the 1960s and 1970s (which unfortunately pretty much got killed off by disco in the late 1970s). For a variety of reasons, it's rare for me to come across entire "albums that should exist" in this genre. But every now and then I do, and here's a really nice one.

Curtis Mayfield certainly in a giant of soul music. He had a long run of good music, but I think he peaked around 1970 to 1972. So here's a "live" album that captures him at that peak. I put "live" in quotes because there actually is no audience whatsoever, but he plays an entire concert as if there was, including some between song banter.

The cause of this strange situation is the German TV show "Beat Club." By 1972, it had evolved to where it would let major artists stretch out and play more than just the usual one or two hits. I think in Mayfield's case he had three songs get on air at the time, but he recorded an hour of music in a TV studio for the producers to select from.

Most of this performance was lost in someone's vault for many years. But a bunch of complete Beat Club performances have been recently been making their way to YouTube, and just last month Mayfield's appearance got posted. I converted it to mp3 format and broke it into individual tracks.

The concert is from early 1972, so it predates his huge selling "Superfly" soundtrack later in the year. But it's got lots of great songs from his two earlier acclaimed solo albums, "Curtis" and "Roots." The set list is somewhat different from his 1971 album "Curtis/Live" (recorded 12 months earlier), and of course there's the sound quality advantage of having no crowd noise (though you may feel one loses some of the live concert vibe).

I particularly like his version of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues." This song fits him so perfectly that it almost seems like he wrote it for Gaye instead.

I've cleaned up the recording in the sense that I removed some false starts and dead silence between songs. Also, he performed the last song, "We're a Winner," all the way through, then decided he didn't like it and performed it all the way through again. I only kept the second take.

I was all set to post this, but then it occurred to me that it didn't seem right to post something from Mayfield from 1972 and not include anything from the fabulous "Superfly" soundtrack. So I poked around and found four key songs from that done in 1972 that match the studio sound quality of the rest of this. Two of them actually were done live in the studio with no audience, the same as the Beat Club performance. I've added those at the end.

The result is an hour and nine minutes of prime Mayfield. This really should be released officially, just like so many BBC performances have been.

And by the way, if you want to see it and not merely listen to it, just search for it on YouTube.

01 Inner City Blues - Ain't No Sunshine (Curtis Mayfield)
02 Check Out Your Mind (Curtis Mayfield)
03 Mighty Mighty [Spade and Whitey] (Curtis Mayfield)
04 We've Only Just Begun (Curtis Mayfield)
05 We've Gotta Have Peace (Curtis Mayfield)
06 We People Who Are Darker than Blue (Curtis Mayfield)
07 Keep On Keeping On (Curtis Mayfield)
08 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
09 Stare and Stare (Curtis Mayfield)
10 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
11 Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield)
12 We're a Winner (Curtis Mayfield)
13 Pusherman (Curtis Mayfield)
14 Freddie's Dead (Curtis Mayfield)
15 Eddie, You Should Know Better (Curtis Mayfield)
16 Superfly (Curtis Mayfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687918/CURTSMYFLD1972_BetClbBremnGermny__1-19-1972_atse.zip.html

The album cover is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video of Mayfield's Beat Club performance.