Curtis Mayfield's Book of Revelation

A look at Mayfield's debut solo album

Welcome music lovers to another edition of ‘Listening Sessions’!

I love the music of the Impressions and of Curtis Mayfield who fronted the group during its glory years in the nineteen sixties. It’s soulful and rooted in the church. It’s also uplifting. Indeed, Mayfield was probably the most thoughtful and thought-provoking songwriter of the Civil Rights era.

His first album after leaving the Impressions was titled simply Curtis and was released in September 1970. It leads off with one of the most apocalyptic introductions in all of music. ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go’ scared the pants off of me as a youngster and it remains a bracing experience to hear. It’s the starting point for the following essay that I hope you will enjoy. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it as well as about Curtis Mayfield.

I will next be in touch a little longer than usual to give me just a little more time for my next piece which will be a look at the Beau Brummels, one of the great unheralded groups of the sixties best known for their early hits ‘Just a Little’ and ‘Laugh, Laugh.’ I’ve long wanted to write about them and am excited to finally do so so expect to hear from me again in two weeks on July 28.

Until then, may good listening be with you all!

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“Last night, I was so depressed
And I went and got the Bible
And I turned to the Book of Revelations.”
- from ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go’, written by Curtis Mayfield

Those are the first three lines spoken by an unnamed woman over a foreboding bass line and an Altman-like din of conversation. She continues: “and if people would just get and read the Bible and read the Book of Revelations, they would really turn around and straighten up.” A hypnotic bongo rhythm begins. She finishes: “and this is all we need to do is just get the good book and read it and put it to everyday life.”

“SISTAHS……..sistahs……..sistahs……..”

So proclaims a heavily echoed fire-and-brimstone preacher in full Julius Caesar, lend-me-your-ears rapping and beseeching. After calling out others, primarily through racial epithets, he lays out the bad news.

“Don’t worry
If there’s Hell below
We’re all……..we’re all……..we’re all
Gonna go……..gonna go……..gonna go
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Out of this almost literal descent into the lake of fire and eternal damnation comes a slow, funky groove. If we’re all doomed to this fate, we’ll at least arrive to it dancing.

In truth, the first 70 seconds of ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go’ are among the most terrifying on record, It leads off Curtis Mayfield’s debut on record as a solo artist, Curtis, released in September 1970. It was also released as a single and hit #29 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song was also included, as were pretty much most of the hits of the seventies, on a budget compilation on K-Tel’s record label. K-Tel was a Canadian company that specialized in as-seen-on-TV products. ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go’ was included on its 20 Heavy Hits Vol. 1 collection between Tommy James’ ‘Church St. Soul Revival’ and the Stampeders’ ‘Carry Me,’ proof that while K-Tel albums had lousy fidelity and mercilessly edited songs to fit 10 to 12 of them on a side of vinyl, they at least had a mischievous dedication to variety.

I mention this as it was on 20 Heavy Hits, Vol. 1 that I first heard Mayfield’s apocalyptic warning. The reference to the Book of Revelation, recalling more than one Pentecostal sermon that laid out the dark visions of John the Apostle, was more than enough to obliterate the music that followed—on the K-Tel compilation, less than two minutes of it followed the freaky opening segment.

Fast-forward 15 years or so and I would meet ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go’ again. It would echo repeatedly throughout the basement of Toronto’s CN Tower, where I worked during the summer of 1999. Where I was stationed was down the stairs in the bowels of, at the time, the world’s tallest freestanding structure in its attractions area. By attractions that meant arcade games, a small theatre where a short film about Canada was screened (the music in between showings was, of all things, Thelonious Monk’s Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1) and, way in the back, two simulator rides: one of a helicopter trip across Canada and the other of a roller coaster ride. A sound system was rigged throughout the arcade and what was invariably played was the soundtrack to the 1995 motion picture Dead Presidents.

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Set at the dawn of the seventies, the movie featured an irresistible cross-section of soul just as the music was moving into the era of the album. On the soundtrack was the Spinners’ ‘I’ll Be Around,’ James Brown’s ‘The Big Payback,’ Isaac Hayes’ transformations of ‘Walk On By’ (just the truncated single version) and ‘The Look of Love,’ and yes, Mayfield’s ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go.’

Included was both the opening doom and gloom, and the full six-and-a-half minutes that followed, a philosophical statement on the state of the world in the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred-and-seventy.

Mayfield prophesized a bleak future for a world marked by indifference while it burns, both literally and figuratively. With President Nixon reassuring everyone to “don’t worry,” it’s not surprising that “everybody’s praying / and everybody’s saying / but when come time to do / everybody’s laying.” In the end, Mayfield despairs “tell me what we’re gonna go / if everything I say is true / that’s ain’t no way it ought to be / if only all the mass could see.” If it seemed utterly dastardly to keep pumping that message out to the tourists at the Tower in the summer of 1999, mere months before the collective panic over what turned out to be the non-event of Y2K, it may have been even more surprising back in 1970 that the deliver of the song’s message was Curtis Mayfield.

It wasn’t that Mayfield had not been well established as a socially and politically conscious artist. During the fourteen years that Mayfield was with the Impressions (from 1956 to 1958, the group was known as the Roosters), he increasingly tackled the urgent issue of Civil Rights in the music of the group after Jerry Butler left to begin a solo career as a debonair soul singer and the group's classic lineup of Mayfield, Sam Gooden and Fred Cash took hold.

‘People Get Ready’ and ‘Keep on Pushing’ rightly stand as anthems of hope and empowerment. It would not be wrong to call them hymns as there is a religiosity to both with shouts of “halleluiah” and the promise of deliverance in the River Jordan.

Thoughts of the church were never far when listening to the Impressions. Call and response was a particular specialty. 1963’s ‘It’s All Right,’ the group’s biggest hit, is built on it. When the three harmonize on the main refrain with Mayfield on the higher end, and Gooden and Cash on the lower, it’s pure pulpit proclamation. “It’s all right / to have a good time / ’cause it’s all right / oh, it's all right” could be seen as a celebration of the resiliency and vibrancy of Black life and Black culture in the same way that Sam Cooke’s songs about parties—‘Having a Party’ and ‘Good Times’ especially—had an underlining urgency rooted in the African-American experience.

Expressly secular songs also had a deep righteousness. ‘I’m Talking About My Baby’ from 1965 has the cadence and feel of a gospel song. Substitute Jesus at the end of the song title and “Yes, Lord” for “Yes, Yes” at the end of each line in the verse and you'll get what I’m driving at.

As Civil Rights turned to Black pride, the shift was reflected in the celebratory ‘We’re a Winner’ from 1967. Mayfield’s songs also became more reflective. ‘Choice of Colours,’ for example, asks both “if you had a choice of colours / which one would you choose, my brother?” and “do you respect your brother’s woman friend / and share with Black folks not of kin?” The party-sounding ‘Mighty Mighty (Spade & Whitey)’ outlines that Mayfield, like Dr. King, ultimately believed that Civil Rights and the overcoming of racism and bigotry was a concern for everyone, and that “your Black and white power / has grown to be a crumblin’ tower.”

The party though was over on ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go.’ The only hope is Mayfield’s unspoken wish that humankind’s collision course with destruction may somehow be avoided. The overall sound of the song reflected a break from the refined but not too elegant sound of the Impressions, a process that began with the block-party rush of ‘We’re a Winner’ and gradually intensified until Check Out Your Mind!, the group’s final album with Mayfield and released at the beginning of 1970, with the introduction of funky and trippy wah-wah guitars, especially on the album’s title track.

Even as there are horns and strings on Mayfield’s debut offering as a solo artist, they accentuate an urban feel. They do not sound as full or as polished as they did on something like Isaac Hayes’s Hot Buttered Soul or on a Lou Rawls (a Chicagoan, like Mayfield) record or on the sides being cut as part of the emerging Philly soul movement.

In many ways, Curtis finds Mayfield not entirely unyoked from the Impressions. Gooden and Cash do not appear on the album—the Impressions would re-launch with Leroy Huston taking Mayfield’s place—but it’s easy to hypothetically hear them backing Mayfield on his psalm to Black womanhood, ‘Miss Black America.’

Feelings of pride and admiration are swept up in the affirmative lift of the music. Mayfield’s love songs always spoke deeply of a romantic love that was never glib and was cognizant that love and respect are indivisible. ‘The Makings of You,’ with its angelic harp passages and frequent shifts into a waltz, is the brittle counterpoint to ‘Miss Black America’’s exultation. Mayfield’s voice was, in many ways, the opposite of the mold of the male soul voice: thick, powerful and a little rough around the edges, and with enough volume to push through a band’s accompaniment. There were others like Smokey Robinson, Eddie Kendricks and Ron Isley whom, like Mayfield, sang softer and intimately. So when he sings a line like “add a little honeysuckle and / a great big expression of happiness / say you couldn’t miss with a dozen roses,” there’s a poignancy that is partially due to the lyrics but also in how his voice almost breaks as he sings them.

It’s certainly one of the reasons why Mayfield was and remains a deeply celebrated artist. He embodied the trials and triumphs of the everyman, exploring the depths of human existence and seeking to be empathetic and understanding always. Indeed, there is little bravado in the breakup song ‘Give It Up’ despite the forward motion of the brass arrangement. It is, instead, a reflection on a marriage that has floundered and is tinged with the regret of knowing that the right thing to do is to throw in the towel. ‘The Other Side of Town’ paints a sobering portrait of hunger, hand-me-downs and hopelessness to someone on the right side of tracks. ‘Wild and Free’ eschews a flippant celebration of selfishness for the far more consequential quest for freedom for all.

These songs form the connective tissues between Curtis’ three grander statements. Of course, first and foremost is ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go.’ The others signify a dissipation of its gloom; a realization that peddling fire and brimstone will only get one so far. One must also inspire. It was here that Mayfield was a master as well.

‘We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue’ is a rallying cry. Especially trenchant is Mayfield’s reminder that “this ain’t no time for segregatin’ / I’m talking ’bout brown and yellow too / high yellow girl, can’t you tell? / you’re just the surface of our dark deep well.” Solidarity is the concern and it is a message propelled as only Mayfield could (how about these lines: “shall we commit our own genocide / before you check out your mind?”). But equally remarkable is how the song sounds—an almost mournful horn arrangement that is heavy on the French horn, a psychedelic interlude emphasizing Mayfield’s other-worldly and tremolo-heavy guitar playing like Roebuck “Pops” Staples’ and pensive strings. Mayfield’s vision here is both expansive and intimate. Ultimately, his concern is to raise the listener. In other words, to ‘Move on Up.’

‘Move on Up’ is the longest track on Curtis at almost nine minutes. It’s also the album’s most inspirational moment. With bright brass and a driving beat, Mayfield urges, despite “though there may be wet road ahead,” to keep pressing on “to a greater day” and reassures that “with just a little faith, if you put your mind to it / you can surely do it.” The effectiveness of affirmations like these depend almost wholly on who is saying them. In the wrong hands, they are snake oil used to manipulate. Mayfield marks them as heralding the good news—the Word, so to speak. And it’s a universal message. After four verses, it seems like ‘Move on Up’ is about to end. But then the beat is struck again and the groove continues for another six minutes.

The extended length is not simply a statement of fashion—longer tracks were becoming de rigueur for almost all types of music by 1970—but to underline the power of Mayfield’s belief in better days and to transfer that conviction, no matter what exactly that would mean to each individual, to one and all. At the end of ‘Move On Up,’ Mayfield may have thought that the trajectory of the planet was headed to hell but the implacable fact that this fate could be avoided pierces through the pessimism. That hope is arguably harder to cling to today than it was fifty-four years ago but it’s worth it still, I think, to cast one’s lot with Curtis Mayfield. I know I am.