As best I can remember, it was late 1962, maybe early 1963. (When I looked up release dates, I found out that the song I later referenced was actually released in March 1964.) I was still in high school. Back then, the disc jockeys on radio station WYLD would give away 45-records to the fifth, sixth, or seventh caller. Occasionally, Groovy Gus would announce he was going to take “caller number two.” The only time I ever won anything on the radio was when I got lucky calling in for I’m So Proud by Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. 

You used to have to go over to the station to pick up the record you won. The next day I was down there. And then the five-mile-plus bus ride back home, proud of myself, with my prize, the valued forty-five disc, firmly in hand.

Vivian was the girl in the next block. We kind of, sort of, was boyfriend and girlfriend. Our big daytime dates was going out to City Park, reclining on the grass, playing kissy-coo with each other. She was the recipient of my quick on the dialing-finger award. Yes, rotary phones was what people used back in the fifties and early sixties.

As most initial teenage love affairs inevitably do, our relationship didn’t last even two summers long. Vivian and I lost track of each other. We didn’t go to the same school. She was the oldest of a large brood of siblings and often had baby sitting duties.

By the summer of 1964, after my senior year of high school, I had a for real girlfriend, and also had been offered a scholarship to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. I didn’t last long way up on the opposite end of the Mississippi River. The fabled waterway, which flowed about fifteen blocks away from our home in the infamous Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, had its origins up in the Minnesota cold clime where I briefly attended college. Late August to late March was about as much as I, in my confused state, could deal with up there. It was still snowing when I left.

Shortly after retreating like a war weary soldier, sullenly heading home, unsure about what I wanted to do, my life underwent an unforeseen but profound development. I had not signed up for the draft on my eighteenth birthday as the law required, so some months afterwards, in order to avoid going to Nam, I went down to the recruitment station saying I would volunteer to go anywhere but Viet Nam. The recruiter laughed at me. I responded that I was sure they had some jobs that they didn’t employ in Nam and I wanted one of those jobs. He told me, they did, but I had to take a test to qualify for such a position. I told him, “give me the test.” As I expected, I passed the test.

A year on both ends of my three year stint found me stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. I spent my middle year on a mountaintop in South Korea. I was responsible for the electronic maintenance of the Nike Hercules missile and that included arming the nuclear warhead.

The army was another kind of education. Especially on the weekends after payday. Man. We would head out to the little entertainment strip in black El Paso. Get there early, scoff up a plate full of greens and chitlins, and then go around the corner to the lil joint that passed for a sho nuff nightclub and dance our asses off to We’re A Winner. Of course, we had all the appropriate hand motions to go with Curtis’ evocative lyrics. Right after that song came out in the spring of 1968, Dr. King was assassinated on April 4th. My army service ended in June of that year.

After becoming a G.I., the only other time I ever saw Vivian was once when I was home on leave. We were glad to see each other but nothing became of the meeting. I was returning to base the next day.

When I mustered out of the Army, June of 1968, the times had changed. The Civil Rights movement that I had happily participated in while a high school student, had morphed into the Black Power struggle. I, of course, was eager to jump smack dab in the middle of that volatile mix. Also, not too much later, by the beginning years of the seventies I was married with kids. 

Throughout all those youthful years, Curtis Mayfield remained one of my favorite artists. Mayfield became a mega-popular singer/songwriter with his classic 1972 soundtrack for the hit of that summer: Superfly. But as tremendous as Superfly was, the 1973 Back To The World follow-up album was the music that really touched me. I’m sure that particular recording was meaningful to a bunch of young, black men recently returned from the armed forces, and especially so for those who were still serving overseas.

Many years afterwards I can never forget attending a concert. Curtis Mayfield was the honored artist. This program was well after the horrible August of 1990 accident when a massive piece of stage equipment fell over and nearly crushed Mayfield to death. He was paralyzed from the neck down. At the tribute program that night, water was in my eyes after Mayfield was literally wheeled on stage and spoke softly but strongly from his wheel chair.

By the end of the nineties decade, Mayfield was gone. He died the day after Christmas in 1999. Although I often proclaim myself a “Coltrane freak”, the total truth is that I’m also thoroughly in love with Curtis Mayfield. Mayfield. The poet. The musician. The man. The survivor. A paraplegic who, I’m told, recorded his prophetic last album, New World Order, flat on his back, fitfully singing into a tube, because he was unable to stand. It even took too much effort to sit up and sing. So he was recorded in bed. Damn. Mayfield, you the man. A true definition of persistent manhood. Right on. Right on for the Mayfield.

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Go HERE and HERE-2 for a January 1972 Curtis Mayfield set.

-kalamu ya salaam / May 2019