Hush Now Child

I was having a rubbish day at work today, far too much to do, absolutely no time to do it in and all of it awkward. Add in some bonus post office stress at lunchtime and, man, I was a race car in the red by 2pm.

Luckily Dr 1537 knew just the cure. He reached into his musical dispensary and reached for the one with the truly impressive trousers on the cover, cued it up and 8 minutes and 54 seconds later everything was fine.

Bite your lip and take a trip
Though there may be wet road ahead 
And you cannot slip
Just move on up
For peace you will find

Curtis Mayfield Curtis, still grooving on strong at the age of fifty one.

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Released on his co-owned label Curtom* Curtis was the former Impressions singer debut solo LP. Hitting the streets before Marvin’s social issues album, Curtis blended joyous uplifting anthems, social commentary and aspiration, like nothing else before it; people loved it too and it was a big commercial success.

Truly progressive soul penned, performed and produced by a man who clearly was possessed of a truly progressive soul.

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Opening track ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go’ would be the stand out best track on any other LP released that year, but it has to settle for second best on Curtis.

Everybody smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke
Use the pill and the dope, dope, dope, dope, dope

It is an incredible, incredulous, incandescent track, dealing with the firestorm of racial, religious and class conflict in the US at the time**. Beginning with a lady extoling the virtues of the Book of Revelation, some truly killer fuzz bass and a tribal rollcall, ‘Hell’ just blasts on from there. I love the way it isn’t remotely partisan, Mayfield just calls it as he sees it over some of the very best beats ever laid down^, that fallen angelic voice of his occasionally muffled and mired in the ugliness of it all.

The harp that ushers in ‘The Other Side Of Town’ also points us heavenward, but as Mayfield makes clear, we ain’t building anything similar down here. Again the orchestration is superb, playing against the sparseness of the other instrumentation, everything held together by that voice again as he rails against the inequality inherent in it all. It’s a subtle beast this one and easily the equal of many other oftener-touted political tracks of the era.

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Clear the way as Curtis dishes out one of the truly best song titles I can think of right now^* ‘We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue’, a galvanizing call for darker-than-blue unity that rolls through some very progressive time changes indeed.

‘Move On Up’ kicks the doors down on side 2 and music just doesn’t get any better than this. Everything that is true and good in the world coalesces here in the truly Holy trinity of rhyme, rhythm and execution. It is a song that means a lot to me and is only equalled by Jimmy Cliff’s ‘The Harder They Come’ as a personal credo.

Take nothing less than the supreme best
Do not obey rumours people say
'Cause you can pass the test
Just move on up to a greater day

And then just as ‘Move On Up’ winds itself up to a climax at around 3:59 THEN it just explodes rhythmically and gets even better. The percussion and sax on this track is just breath-taking and there aren’t many songs that are far too short at a total running time of 8:54. This is why our species evolved ears and ‘Move On Up’ may singlehandedly justify our existence in some cosmic ledger. Credo.

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Inevitably, Curtis does not maintain its altitude and we get, well, one of the very worst tracks I can think of next in ‘Miss Black America’. Now, I am looking at this track shorn of all cultural and historical context and I fully understand the aspiration and rightful racial pride inherent in the song’s wish, but, oh dear, it smells. I think it is the dialogue at the beginning, it just drips saccharine … urggh! Hush now child! It is worse than any of Stevie Wonder’s similar slips*^.

(For the record it should be stated that the demo (diet?) version of ‘Miss Black America’ included on various deluxes of Curtis and Spotification is an infinitely simpler and better track. Less being a lot more here.)

There is something endearing in the string-smothered ‘Wild And Free’ with its slightly odd wonky sway, but ‘Give It Up’ takes it up another notch in a search for a grand transcendent finale and misses, robbing this LP of the finish it deserves.

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The soundscapes and forms that Curtis Mayfield conjured were incredible and I do love the way there was never a whiff of machismo around his records. Unfortunately, Curtis is not an incredible LP in my view, although it does contain some truly flabbergasting music.

BUT let us not forget just how incredible, medicinally uplifting and mind expanding Curtis is at best, well worth your hard-earned coin any day of the week and not just for Mr Mayfield’s awesome fashion sense.

So hush now, child and don't you cry
Your folks might understand you 
By and by
Move on up and keep on wishin'
Remember your dream is your only scheme
So keep on pushin'

1061 Down (below).

PS: So much better:

PPS: Slight observation, in common with Superfly the musicians here do not get the listing and credits they deserve. Sure a list of names is something, but who played what? share out the love Curtom and remember, we’re all winners!

*’We’re a winner’ is the moral under the logo. I’m not going to disagree.

**insert my standard joke about ‘good job we’ve sorted all that out in the last fifty years, eh readers? with great, unselfish leaders and far-sighted planning‘.

^ever laid down until we hit track 6 that is. Seriously though, just listen to how the orchestral side of things is deployed here; so clever, so heavy.

^*or at least those not involving swearing.

*^the ones that occasionally jolt me out of sheer reverie and into diabetic shock and eventually diarrhoea, reminding you that even that genius is not perfect.