Superfly

3.  The Record Club of America was where I got most of my records before I could drive. The deal was sweet; I believe it was six records for a penny to join (plus small shipping charge), with club prices after that. Unlike the Columbia record club where you had to send a pint of blood with full retail price for each record for a year after you received the opening deal (I never did), RCA didn't require you stay in. Of course they went bankrupt.
My first batch included Carole King/Tapestry, Cat Stevens/Catch Bull at Four, Led Zep/lll, Emerson, Lake and Palmer/Pictures at an Exhibition, and the record I'd like to write about today, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly.

Chicago in the early seventies was not pretty. Neither was whatever city dear to your youth either. Philadelphia, NYC, L.A.,Louisville, you name it, there was trash on the street, adult movie houses, prostitutes, and pigeon droppings. The few times I went to downtown Chicago from my suburban home in Northbrook, usually to a movie at the Michael Todd Theater or Marshall Fields, we would park and walk by theaters like the Woods, showing Bruce Lee and Blacula films. Even through the eighties you could park anywhere in the heart of downtown on the street on a Sunday for free because no one was down there. It was a ghost town. We would park a block away to see the Sundowners at the Double-R Ranch on Randolph.

My dad would sometimes take me to his trucking company on Hubbard on Saturday mornings so I could earn a few bucks washing trucks while he killed slow moving poisoned rats with a shovel. The murals that you see on the walls below the train tracks were just being painted. We'd pull up, and there was usually a bevy of hookers sitting on the steps after a long night, who would part so we could enter. Sometimes after taking me for a slice of pizza at D'Amatos he would take me on a tour of the neighborhoods, showing me skid row on Madison St, where the grizzled homeless men lined both sides of the street, paper bags lifted to their lips. Reminds me--my first Bulls game around that time, against the Phoenix Suns with Connie Hawkins and the Van Arsdale boys at the Stadium, some young neighborhood guys said they would watch our car for $5. They did too. And as we walked up, saw the fire escape come down from a door leading to the upper level, as a bunch of neighborhood boys scooted up.

Superfly was ones of those Woods Theater movies. Curtis had success with the Impressions, but this soundtrack was the one that launched his solo career with Freddie's Dead and Superfly crossing over the r&b to pop charts as hits. The pop charts of my youth were truly special and I'm not being a nostalgic old-timer here. Consider that when this record came out, Bill Withers, The O'Jays, and Roberta Flack with Donnie Hathaway shared the top of the playlists with Alice Cooper and the Stones. The diversity was amazing. I grew up loving r&b alongside rock&roll.

Little Child Runnin' Wild opens with Wurlie and congas, cue the hi-hat, then this super-fuzz, super-bad sound comes through (a bass?) with lead guitar. Strings, horns, then the smoothest, most effortless melodic voice in the biz wafts down the street. Curtis paints the picture, doesn't need a movie to show you anything. He's not judging, he's just sayin'. Pusherman is next with that bass line, and the lyrics come tumbling out in anapests, offering whatever you need, coke or weed. Exposition--"Ain't I clean, bad machine, super cool super mean, feeling' good for the man, Superfly, here I stand."
"Got to be mellow, y'all."
Shit, I can't stand when I see frat boys dressed as pimps for Halloween.

Freddie's Dead, the first hit, the one that made me want to buy the record.
"Everybody's misused him, ripped him off and abused him."
In Chicago, Curtis knew lots of Freddies. Ain't nothin' said, cause Freddie's dead.
"Hey hey love love ha ha love love." Those ha ha's showing that the street has no time for love.
In the bridge, Curtis pleads in 1st person--"All I want is some peace of mind, with a little love I'm trying to find."

Superfly. The character in the movie just didn't live up to the lyrics. "This cat of the slum, had a mind, wasn't dumb" Curtis writes, "If you lose , don't ask no questions why." Nobody going to give you answers.

The sounds on this record are familiar to anyone who grew up on seventies cop shows. Chucka-chucka wah-wah guitar, the strings, shuffling drum beat--you heard it on shows like Kojak. But Curtis has the guitar chops to give it soul to go with that hot-buttered voice.

It is so tragic Curtis is not around today--he would have been making great music. Check out Roots, Curtis, Back to the World or There's No Place Like America Today for the best of the best.

Chicago cleaned up downtown by the nineties. All the cities did. Blame Richard J. Daley for what Chicago was in the seventies. You can bet the wards with the aldermen delivering for the machine looked just fine. Most racially segregated city in the nation. Jane Byrne started to turn it around after the Boss died of a grabber, then Harold Washington truly began to even the playing field. Little Richie, same bad grammar as daddy with less dese and dos, maybe, but brought back the game of playing favorites and no-bid contracts, and miles of black wrought-iron fence. Privatized everything, and now Chicago is nice and sparkly. In the neighborhoods he wanted it to be. If you ask around you can still find Superfly.