It’s one of the most famous soundtracks ever. And maybe the only funk album you’ve ever listened to. But there’s a lot more to Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly than chunky guitars and relentless bass lines. And as we’ve just passed the 14th anniversary of Mayfield’s death, it’s a good time to look back at his most famous, subversive and best album.
But before we get to Mayfield, let’s make a quick detour to February 1970, where the number the one single in America is Sly and The Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” During the late 60’s, Stone’s mix of soul, psychedelic rock and R&B was the cutting edge of music, inspiring everyone from James Brown to Miles Davis to The Band.
But after 1969’s Stand!, Stone’s personal life unraveled. He moved to Los Angeles and his drug habits grew out of control. Deadlines for the band’s next album came and went; Epic ended up releasing a stop-gap best of compilation. So did gigs, which Stone missed with an increasing frequency. As his record label demanded more hits, the Black Panther party wanted his music to get more political. Faced with pressure from all sides, the only music Sly released in 1970 was that chart-topping single.
But he was recording all the while. Cooped up in a mansion, Stone and a cast of supporting musicians cooked up the dark stew of There’s A Riot Going On. The music was darker, more ominous. It grooved, but wasn’t something you’d dance to. It was too slow, too out of control, too spooky. Drum machines gave everything a mechanical, impersonal feeling; voices alternated between shouts and whispers, moaning with lyrics about addiction, media stereotypes, and social unrest. It closed with a dirge-like take of “Thank You”, maybe Stone’s idea of a cynical joke.
The album was a shot across the bow of R&B. Almost overnight, the tone of the genre changed and artists began reacting to it’s impact. Marvin Gaye went from singing “Don’t break my heart” to tackling drug addiction, urban decay, and the Vietnam War on “What’s Going On“.
As this was going on, a small movie about a black private eye exploded at the box office. Shaft, made for $500,000, ended up grossing over $13 million and inspired a line of imitators: Across 110th Street, Hammer, Blacula. All essentially followed the same formula and capitalized on what was quickly called Blaxploitation. It’s soundtrack, especially the iconic theme by Isaac Hayes, quickly became legendary.
Super Fly started as another one of these flicks. It’s about a Youngblood Priest, a soon to be retired cocaine dealer making one final score. He encounters crooked cops, the mob and other dealers, double-crossing them all. There’s a pimped-out Cadillac. At one point, Priest even does karate. It’s a fun movie, but one very much of it’s time.
What sets it’s soundtrack apart is how Mayfield took from both worlds, from Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Going On and Isaac Hayes’ Shaft, and made something entirely unique and unprecedented. It’s a scathing counter to the movie, anchored by music that’s relentlessly funky and catchy. But the way Mayfield refuses to remain impartial, often directly criticizing the characters, sets it apart. It’s equal parts social commentary and soundtrack. And it’s a work of utter genius.
The opening notes of “Wild Child Running Wild” set the scene: scorching guitars and pounding drums echo Isaac Hayes’ soundtrack to Shaft, but immediately, Mayfield refuses to glamorize anything, singing about an unwanted child, a broken home and the mayor who doesn’t breath “our polluted air.” On “Pusherman”, he assumes the role of dealer-as-a-businessman (“For a generous fee / Make your world what you want it to be”), showing how it’s not far removed from other sales gigs.
The center of the album is “Freddie’s Dead”, the album’s darkest song. The sound of “Freddie’s Dead” is a blueprint for most people’s idea of 70’s funk. As his chunky, wah-wahed guitar echoes and bounces around, a funky bass riff rumbles along as a string section adds texture and eventually mutates into a police siren. Of course, that’s also missing the point of the song: Mayfield taking a sober look at Fat Freddie to task, a junkie who’s used by people and disposed of once they’re done with him.
“Everybody’s misused him, ripped him up and abused him,” sings Mayfield of Youngblood Priest’s junkie friend, “If you wanna be a junkie, wow, remember, Freddie’s dead.” In the movie, once the cops pick up Freddie and beat a confession out of him, he’s hit by a car and left for dead on the street.
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Mayfield saves his harshest criticism for Priest in the title track, the movie’s closing number. Instead of glamorizing the movie’s protagonist who just pulled off a huge cocaine deal, he picks at Priest’s trappings: “Ask him his dream, what does it mean? He wouldn’t know.”
Outside of a flashy car and his role as a drug dealer, who really is Priest? Can he be both a hero and a criminal? Mayfield reminds us that the man envied by all also lives alone and doesn’t fit into society: “ ‘Can’t be like the rest,’ is the most he’ll confess / But time’s running out and there’s no happiness.”
But Mayfield’s commentary never crosses the line into being preachy; he never speaks down to anyone. Freddie’s a warming, yes, but he’s a tragic figure, his downfall as sad as anyone else’s; Priest doesn’t know how to exist inside the law, but he’s a creation of his environment, the polluted city of the opening song. But Mayfield plays everything straight: he tells it like he sees it. By album’s end, you care for these people. Mayfield certainly did.
Unlike Shaft, Super Fly wasn’t a huge box office success, raking in a little over $2 million in the box office. But Mayfield’s soundtrack took off. In 1972 the album peaked at the top of both the R&B and pop charts for over a month. It made it up to the second-overall spot on the Jazz charts, too. Released as a single, the title track climbed into the top ten and “Freddie’s Dead” actually cracked the top five. It also kickstarted Mayfield’s solo career: he’d work on five more soundtracks by the decade’s end, on top of an album-a-year pace. Unfortunately, he never again quite hit everything like he did on Super Fly.
Over the next decade or so, Mayfield released a handful of good singles (“Kung Fu“, “In Your Arms Again“) but in 1989, an accident at a concert paralyzed him from the neck down. He’d actually manage to record one more album, lying on his back and painstakingly singing one line at a time, but he died on Dec. 26, 1999 at 57.
Even now, some 14 years after his death, Mayfield’s legacy remains on this soundtrack. Musically, it inspired a generation of funk musicians. And another has taken it to heart: it’s been sampled by everyone from Kanye West to Eminem to Digable Planets. Over 40 years later, it’s rightly recognized as a classic slab of 70’s funk. But take another listen: Mayfield’s messages are as timely today as they were then.