76. Curtis Mayfield, "Superfly"

 


Quick confession: I have never seen the film this is the soundtrack to, so I'm at something of a disadvantage.  But I can take this as an artistic statement on its own merits, I feel like.  Like I did Saturday Night Fever and I've only seen parts of that movie.  There are some soundtracks I think that lose something if you haven't seen the movie or play, but even if there was never a movie, this album would still be regarded as one of the best ever.

I'm not sure I've ever listened to it all the way through, but I knew a lot of it just through cultural osmosis.  That second song, "Pusherman," is an absolute soul/funk classic, a total jam with that bass groove and those guitar accents and most of all those drums!  The sound is all about the drums.  Tyrone McCullen stepped in for Mayfield's regular drummer, Morris Jennings, who was back in Chicago when this track was recorded in New York.  He works seamlessly with percussionist Henry Gibson to get that rollicking drum sound; the pitch-shifting Rototoms are an incredible touch.  The song is interesting in that it neither glorifies nor condemns its subject.  Selling drugs is how the guy marginalized in society gets by.  He knows on some level it's bad but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do:

Silent life
Of crime
A man of odd circumstance
A victim of ghetto demands
Feed me money for style
And I'll let you trip for a while
Insecure from the past
How long can a good thing last?

The next song, "Freddie's Dead," was the first single, and has an immediately recognizable hook.  It was nominated for Best R&B song but lost to "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" which I guess is nothing to be ashamed of.  Unlike "Pusherman," this song is unequivocally anti-drug ("If you wanna be a junkie, well/Remember Freddie's dead").  It will not surprise you to learn that "No Thing on Me (Cocaine Song)" also concerns drugs, but, you know, the movie was about drugs.  Like "Freddie," this one is flatly anti-drug.

The title song is last and is also a masterpiece of percussion and rhythm.  With a beat this great, you will not be surprised to learn that it has been repeatedly sampled, by, for example, Beastie Boys ("Egg Man"), Geto Boys ("Do It Like G.O."), and Nelly ("Tilt Ya Head Back").  Like a lot of the other songs where the groove is front and center, you could listen to it and forget what a great singer Mayfield is, but his keening, carefully enunciated falsetto is part of what makes this album so great.  I can't imagine someone else singing it.

We touched on Mayfield's tragic life story last time we saw him; paralyzed when a lighting rig fell on him in 1990, he kept making music until his death in 1999.  A true legend.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Yes.

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