Movin’ on Up: The Music and Message of Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions 1965-1973

(Hip-O)

Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions’ chapter of music history proliferates as a landmark citation even the most educated of fanatics might have missed. To the rescue arrives Movin’ on Up, a three-hour lesson in groundbreaking soul as indelible as the very genre itself. Despite this two-hour documentary’s biographical blinders – important specs unfold in detail only in the accompanying DVD booklet – its 20 videos preserve Mayfield’s buttery croon in tandem with the other two Impressions, Fred Cash and Sam Gooden, and their sky-high harmonies that turned the Chicago trio into the MLKs of R&B. “I found myself at a very young age gifted with the music,” explains Mayfield (1942-1999). “It was all in my head, so I could interpret it even though I couldn’t read [music]. Which was something brand new for the industry. It wasn’t rock & roll. It wasn’t gospel. It wasn’t quite contemporary. But it was Curtis.” Actually, it was gospel and rock & roll and ahead of its time. It was also political through its undying faith and spirituality. From first indelible “It’s All Right” and the 1965 video of the lip-syncing Impressions through standards (“People Get Ready”), an unbelievable live twofer from The Old Grey Whistle Test (“Keep on Keeping On,” “We Got to Have Peace”), and finally late-period live footage (“We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” “Superfly,” “Freddie’s Dead,” “Pusherman”), Movin’ on Up authenticates genius. What Stevie Wonder managed on keyboards, Mayfield, who was paralyzed onstage in 1990 when a lighting rig collapsed on him, paralleled on a wah-wah pedal with his precious belief in mankind. Consider him chapter and verse.

This article appears in September 5 • 2008.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.