Traveling Soul (22 page)

For a while, he tried focusing only on the Impressions, but true to his nature, he could never limit himself to one project. By the time King got to Chicago in July, Dad was in the studio with the Impressions working on two albums simultaneously.
One by One
, the first to be released, showed just how tired he was creatively. It had only three original songs out of twelve. The other nine were covers from a bygone era, such as “Mona Lisa” and “Nature Boy,” both made famous by Nat King Cole when my father was a child. The lead single, an original ballad called “Just One Kiss from You,” marked the Impressions' first flop in two years.

Both the single and album seemed inconsistent after the triumphs of
Keep On Pushing
and
People Get Ready
—even more so considering what King was doing in my father's backyard. Just before
One by One
's release, King led a march down State Street to Madison Avenue in downtown Chicago. Traffic halted when the marchers reached Madison, a pocket of them singing the Impressions' “Meeting Over Yonder.” By the time the procession reached city hall, the crowd had swelled to almost one hundred thousand bodies sweating in the sweltering heat.

As King spoke that day, there was serious dissension within the SCLC about the Chicago campaign. Tom Kahn, a movement activist close to both King and northern civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, recalled, “King had this naive faith that he could do in Chicago what he had done in the South, that he could reach down and inspire them, mobilize them, and so forth. And Bayard kept saying, ‘You don't know what you are talking about. You don't know what Chicago is like…. You're going to be wiped out.'”

King expected to face white opposition, especially from Mayor Daley, and Daley delivered, setting his infamous political machine into action. Businessmen who backed King suddenly encountered trouble with garbage collection and city permits. Church leaders who offered
King support found city inspectors knocking at their door, threatening to condemn the church's property.

What King didn't expect was the resistance he would face from his own people. Many Negro ministers and politicians told King to go back where he came from—they benefitted from the racist structure in Chicago, though they wouldn't admit it. People on the street were just as hard to reach. After meeting with a group of Chicago Negroes, King's close friend Hosea Williams said, “I have never seen such hopelessness.” Even King commented to an aide, “You ain't never seen no Negroes like this, have you? … Boy, if we could crack these Chicago Negroes we can crack anything.” Despite the battle raging in his hometown, my father didn't specifically comment.

On August 6, a month after
One by One's
release, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, outlawing discrimination in voting. It didn't affect Curtis since he didn't vote—a fact that always puzzled me, although it seemed he felt most comfortable (and perhaps most effective) dealing with politics in his music. Regardless, the movement scored another huge victory. As if on cue, a week later police brutality in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles ignited a massive riot there. For six days, columns of fire shot into the sky as Negroes in Watts destroyed everything in sight. They were sick of reading about King's successes down South while they suffered in desperate poverty. They didn't care about the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act as long as the police continued to harm them without repercussions. The riot caused 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and over $40 million in property damage. It was just the beginning.

As the year ended and my mother neared the end of her term, the Impressions put the finishing touches on their next album,
Ridin' High
, and released an EP,
Soulfully
. Yet again, though the movement now battled racism in his own city, Dad made no public comment. He still cared about the movement, but he was not a political man. He didn't write made-to-order messages to inspire people; it had to come from his soul.
For whatever reason, he didn't seem to feel that soulful inspiration while King stayed in Chicago.

In fact, he seemed to be running low on inspiration in general.
Soulfully
featured the single “You've Been Cheatin',” a song that borrowed its DNA from Motown and returned the Impressions to respectable chart positions. The next several singles bombed, and
Ridin' High
didn't fare much better than its predecessor. The album features several love letters to Motown, cribbing their insistent tambourine-backed beats and punchy horns.

Dad never wanted his music to sound like anybody else's. He rarely listened to the radio or played another group's records. When he did, he approached it scientifically, seeking to understand his competition. He remained that way throughout his life—Tracy recalls getting a lecture in the early '70s about the dangers of listening to the radio, which seems ironic given how big a role radio played in Dad's childhood.

Yet, despite his desire to forge a unique sound, Dad's music became less and less original during this period. His most complete copy of Motown came with the single “Can't Satisfy,” which borrowed heavily from the Isley Brothers' “This Old Heart of Mine,” and led Motown to sue for publishing rights. They won. “[Curtis] just kind of lost his way there for a moment,” Fred said. “The ideas kind of dried up. It just went dead.”

Ridin' High
didn't revive anything. For the second straight time, the Impressions failed to hit the charts or fit the times. In 1966 drugs came to the fore of youth culture and the psychedelic revolution swept the nation. Pop music took incredible strides into the unknown with albums like the Beatles'
Revolver
, Dylan's
Blonde on Blonde
, and the Beach Boys'
Pet Sounds
. James Brown was busy inventing funk with the monumental success of the previous year's “Papa's Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Motown scored seemingly endless number-one hits, including genre-defining tunes like the Four Tops' “Reach Out I'll Be There” and the Supremes' “You Can't Hurry Love,” both of which rode the heels of the Temptations' game-changing “My Girl.” For the time being, it seemed Curtis couldn't compete.

Perhaps the strains of his personal and professional obligations became too much. When I was born in February 1966, my father was on tour. He wouldn't see me for more than a week after my birth. A woman named Annette kept my mother company during that time and helped navigate the stresses of a newborn baby. Annette had two children with Lenny, the bass player in the Impressions' band, and for a while my mother felt close to her and confided in her. Then, she learned my father was sleeping with her.

Two months later, Dad founded his own record label, Windy C, distributed by Cameo Parkway in Philadelphia. The label focused on a family band called the Five Stairsteps, who had won a talent contest at the Regal Theatre in Chicago. In the spring of '66, the Five Stairsteps released “You Waited Too Long” on Windy C, which climbed to number sixteen R&B. In Chicago, even the B-side—a song of my father's called “Don't Waste Your Time”—became a hit. Perhaps the most important aspect of their success was the fact Curtis didn't have to write hits for them. After the exhaustion of his days as a one-man hit factory at OKeh, it was a relief to have a group that could develop their own material.

With Windy C up and running, he launched Mayfield Records. The label became a vehicle for the Fascinations, a girl group in the mode of the Ronettes. True to their name, they had a fascinating story. The Fascinations formed in 1960 with two young girls named Shirley Walker and Martha Reeves at the helm. After a disagreement, Reeves left and rejoined her old group, the Del-Phis. The Del-Phis signed to Motown, changed their name to Martha and the Vandellas, and became one of the biggest groups in the world.

The rest of the Fascinations signed to ABC-Paramount in 1962, where they met Curtis. He produced their first single, “Mama Didn't Lie,” the song he'd written for Jan Bradley that almost led him to a job with Chess Records. After failing to hit at ABC, the Fascinations kicked around until my father signed them to Mayfield.

The Fascinations didn't write their own material, so in August my father gave them “Say It Isn't So,” a tune that, with Johnny's arrangement,
captured the sound of the day. It cracked the top fifty R&B. A few months later, he wrote “Girls Are Out to Get You,” which went to number thirteen R&B.

The success of these songs helped position Dad as one of the premier writer/producer/executives in America. Unlike his previous work for other artists, the singles he cut on Mayfield Records left no doubt who deserved the credit. On “Girls Are Out to Get You,” for example, the name Mayfield was stamped on the 45's label four times—“Mayfield” was written in big block letters across the bottom, “Curtis Mayfield” appeared in parentheses below the title as the writer, “Prod. By Curtis Mayfield” appeared in the production credit below the group's name, and “Mayfield Records distributed by Calla Records Inc.” appeared on the label's edge. The effect was overwhelming. No longer was it ABC, OKeh, or Vee-Jay. Now, it was Mayfield, Mayfield, Mayfield, Mayfield.

He also signed another group to Mayfield featuring two young musicians who would have an impact on his career and life over the next few years—Donny Hathaway and Leroy Hutson. Perhaps to get in good with the boss, they renamed the band the Mayfield Singers. They didn't need that extra touch; my father already respected their artistry. About Donny, he said, “This fella, you could just talk to him over the phone and play him a piece of music, and he could call out every chord and every movement and where the fifth was and the augmented and tell you what key it was in. He really baffled me. I always admired people that could do that because I never had that kind of learning.” Dad could already see how Donny would come in handy as a multifaceted weapon—producer, arranger, writer, performer. The same went for Leroy, who studied music in college.

Along with his new labels, Curtis created two new publishing companies—Chi-Sound and Camad. So much for focusing on the Impressions. He couldn't help trying to take on more than one man could handle. Perhaps it was the duality of his Gemini nature surfacing again. Never satisfied with being one thing, he wanted to be both an artist and a businessman. The struggle between business and creativity would continue to tear at him.

As Mayfield and Windy C struggled to get off the ground, serious changes wracked the movement. While the Fascinations rode the charts, Carmichael finally took over SNCC. In early June, after a white racist shot James Meredith during Meredith's March Against Fear from Tennessee to Mississippi, Carmichael joined King, Floyd McKissick, and others to complete the march. Cops arrested them en route. After their release, Carmichael gave a speech that set the terms and language for the new movement. Much like King did with his “I Have a Dream” speech, Carmichael took a feeling that had been in the air for a while and crystallized it. “This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested. I ain't going to jail no more!” he bellowed. “The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!”