Janelle Monáe : 'Magnetic Flux ~ Electraboogie'

Curtis Mayfield learnt piano from his mother and sang gospel music in church. He was born and raised on the mean streets of Chicago where he attended the same school as Jerry Butler (originally from Sunflower, Mississippi), Terry Callier and Major Lance (originally from Winterville, Mississippi). Mayfield made history as a member of The Impressions. Formed in 1958, the Impressions were a renegade outfit from Tennessee who relocated to Illinios, at which point they added Mayfield and Jerry Butler to their line-up. Mayfield became the band's principal songwriter in the 1960s and The Impressions scored a string of hits, their artistic vision culminating in the creation of two of the decade's most challenging soul albums, 'This Is My Country (1968) and 'The Young Mods' Forgotten Story' (1969). Contemporaries noted the jarring social commentary Mayfield brought to the Impressions' albums. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003.

The Impressions recorded 'Wherever You Leadeth Me' in 1969, a song that spoke directly to a growing mood of female empowerment gripping the country. On his debut album, Mayfield recorded 'Miss Black America', a stinging commentary on how femininity was being plucked, patented and repackaged for mass consumption with the aid of the media. Though I don't believe he ever identified himself as either a "radical" or a "feminist", Mayfield was acutely aware of different social struggles and their overlaps.
In the world of soul music, pianist Aretha Franklin began writing more and more songs as her career progressed, yet struggled to get a place for them on her studio albums. The 1970s proved far kinder to Franklin in this regard, but only because she'd fought for her artistic vision. In the mid-1960s, a female songwriter would benefit from being aligned to a male songwriter. For example, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson entered music in the mid-1960s and gathered pace as the decade progressed. Young Stevie Wonder found an ideal collaborator in songwriter Sylvia Moy.
In the following decade, Barry White would build a wildly successful recording career based around his own brand of sexually charged, symphonic soul, uttering sweet nothings into his microphone up close, like Isaac Hayes on valium. Within this heated climate, Minnie Riperton became a major songwriter of the 1970s, her talent greatly admired by Stevie Wonder, and she would often write in collaboration with seasoned professional Richard Rudolph. In the funk arena, there was a genuine gamechanger, as Nona Hendryx strutted her stuff inside the dangerous unit Labelle (Patti Labelle would move towards songwriting some years later). With disco came evolution, as soul songstresses Donna Summer and Candi Staton began co-writing their own material with a new-found freedom, something they'd not really been encouraged to do within the cosy confines of the male-dominated soul arena. It seemed like finally things were changing for the better.
But why was the soul music arena such a challenging place for a woman to find her own true voice? Perhaps the best comparison comes with country music, a musical form that also offered opportunities to women coming from communities where poverty was high and literacy rates were low. It was arrogantly assumed by some male executives and corporate raiders that these girls and women could be tightly controlled, but this assumption was wrong, as history had indicated. Elsie McWilliams, Cindy Walker and hit machine Marijohn Wilkin are in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame for a reason. Jenny Lou Carson was a prolific songwriter and is now acknowledged as being the first woman to write a No.1 country music hit. Liz Anderson enjoyed a lengthy career as a professional songwriter, producing hits for other artists, before emerging as a recording artist in her own right in the mid-1960s. Friends Loretta Lynn and Dottie West knocked down walls in the 1960s; West initially wrote songs with steel guitarist Bill West, while Lynn snuck songs she'd written on to her albums, here and there. By 1967, Bobbie Gentry had emerged as a singer-songwriter of standing and Dolly Parton finally secured backing to go it alone, releasing her now-iconic, introductory country cut, 'Hello, I'm Dolly' (1967). Truth is, Parton was a creative force who'd written the single 'Puppy Love' (1959) with Bill Owens at the age of 13 and would never stop writing, becoming a trailblazer for every woman who entered country music in the rock 'n' roll era.

In 1970, Mayfield decided to go it alone. He engineered a run of exciting soul albums that have come to be regarded as essential social documents of the time. He also produced several socially conscious film soundtracks, contributing musical cuts to a range of theatrical productions including Gordon Parks Jr's crime thriller 'Super Fly' (1972), John Berry's romance 'Claudine' (1974), Sam O'Steen's musical 'Sparkle' (1976) and Robert M. Young's crime drama 'Short Eyes' (1977).

Mayfield's fluid guitar style and distinctive tone came about when he tuned the instrument in to the black keys on his piano, giving the guitar an open F-sharp tuning he'd employ throughout his career. 'Curtis' (1970), 'Roots' (1971), 'Back To The World' (1973) and 'Sweet Exorcist' (1974) are essential soul albums.

Sadly, Curtis Mayfield would be left paralysed from the neck down when lighting equipment fell on him during a performance in Brooklyn, New York, but though he also suffered with diabetes, he never lost his zest for living. He became a double inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 when he was nominated as a solo artist. This same year, Mayfield was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, just prior to his death.

Curtis Mayfield once said the songs he wrote were for everybody to interpret their own way. In 2015, The Songwriters Hall of Fame added a new honour to its annual induction & award process, when establishing the Curtis Mayfield Scholarship Award.

In 2016, celebrations were held to mark the 60th anniversary of Curtis Mayfield's entry into the music industry at the age of 14. Travis Atria and Todd Mayfield's biography 'Traveling Soul : The Life Of Curtis Mayfield' was published around this time and associated events took place around the nation. During professorial lectures given at art colleges, instructors recalled how Marvin Gaye's landmark album 'What's Going On' (1971) built upon the solid songwriting foundations being laid down by socially conscious Chicagoans Curtis Mayfield, Terry Callier, Donny Hathaway and Gil Scott-Heron. Gaye was from the Southwest Waterfront in Washington D.C. and understood the murky world of politics.

In the early 1970s, some of Britains' more adventurous musicians were looking for alternative studio spaces to exploit tax breaks. T-Rex, David Bowie and Elton John had become fixtures at Trident Studios in London, England. In England's capital city, there was also a new group on the horizon known as Queen, a band who'd evolved out of progressive rock band Smile and developed an altogether more sophisticated kind of sound.

The overall picture at Trident Studios can seem a little confused when you try and examine it as rock groups in the early 1970s would often record tracks at multiple studio locations. Trident was also used for mixing and engineering. Tyrannosaurus Rex mutated into T-Rex during their time at Trident Studios which oversaw the recording of their albums 'Prophets, Seers & Sages : The Angels Of The Ages' (1968), 'Unicorn' (1969), 'A Beard Of Stars' (1970), 'T. Rex' (1970) and 'Electric Warrior' (1971).
During this same period, David Bowie worked on the albums 'Space Oddity' (1969), 'The Man Who Sold The World' (1970), 'Hunky Dory' (1971), 'The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust' (1972) and 'Aladdin Sane' (1973) at Trident Studios. Elton John cut live recordings there, which provided a base sound unit for the recording of 'Elton John' (1970), 'Tumbleweed Connection' (1970) and 'Madman Across The Water' (1971).


In 1972, a couple of interesting new studio spaces were rumoured to be opening up and soon. The Grateful Dead had recorded an impromptu concert in France in 1971 at the haunted Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, which had been turned into a studio by experimental composer Michel Magne. The chateau was said to be one of composer Frédéric Chopin's old haunts. The following year, Marc Bolan and Elton John decamped to Hérouville. T-Rex cut the albums 'The Slider' (1972) and 'Tanx' (1973) there.
John's band began dividing time between Trident Studios, Château d'Hérouville, and the Caribou Ranch which was opened by producer James William Guercio in 1972 in the Rocky Mountains, near Nederland, Colorado. The albums 'Caribou' (1974), 'Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy' (1974) and 'Rock Of The Westies' (1974) were heavily infused with the fresh flavours offered by this rural American mountain retreat. Château d'Hérouville hosted extensive sessions for 'Honky Chateau' (1972), 'Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player' (1973) and 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' (1973), all of which displayed John's passion for French music; he'd go on to celebrate French iconography more vividly with the album 'Blue Moves' (1976) before working with Michel Berger and France Gall who also recorded music at Château d'Hérouville.