I don't really like live music. I know that seems weird for someone that loves music as much as I do. And I certainly give barely any credence to a live album actually being "live".
And yet, this Curtis Mayfield album, recorded in the Greenwich Village club The Bitter End in January 1971 is my favorite album of his.
Curtis Mayfield is one of my favorite musicians. He is in the pantheon.
A beautiful, and very real, soul. I cried when he passed.
I remember when he got paralyzed in Brooklyn in 1990 during the soundcheck for an outdoor sort of block party performance. I lighting rig or something fell on him, paralyzing him from the chest down.
He managed to create the incredible album, New World Order (1996), laying on his back. It is a beautiful achievement.
He died the day after Christmas 1999. I remember crying, and Jessica (my then-wife) did too.
Years later, on Christmas Day, I was living in Berkeley, 2014, I think, maybe 2013, and Renee was visiting (the subsequent ex, we were already broken up but still were good friends) and a young black kid, maybe 14, rode down the street on a beach cruiser with a boombox in the basket on the front, and it was Curtis.
Can you imagine Curtis covering "We've Only Just Begun", made famous by the Carpenters? Listen.
He is so eternally cool.
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