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). The concert is from early 1972, so it predates his huge selling "Superfly" soundtrack later in the year. I converted it to mp3 format and broke it into individual tracks. 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. Most of this performance was lost in someone's vault for many years. 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.
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 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. So here's a "live" album that captures him at that peak. He had a long run of good music, but I think he peaked around 1970 to 1972. But every now and then I do, and here's a really nice one.Ĭurtis Mayfield certainly in a giant of soul music. For a variety of reasons, it's rare for me to come across entire "albums that should exist" in this genre. 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).
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