Timeline

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  • June 3, 1942: Curtis Mayfield is born in Chicago, Illinois.

  • 1958: Curtis Mayfield joins the Impressions, a gospel-influenced R&B vocal group that enjoys great success in the Sixties with such groundbreaking singles as “Gypsy Woman,” “It’s All Right,” “Amen,” “People Get Ready,” “Woman’s Got Soul,” “We’re a Winner” and “This is My Country.”

  • December 4, 1961: Curtis Mayfield hits #2 on the R&B chart and #20 on the pop chart with “Gypsy Woman”.

  • November 9, 1963: Curtis Mayfield hits #1 on the R&B chart and #4 on the pop chart with “It’s All Right”.

  • 1970: Curtis Mayfield leaves the Impressions to launch a solo career. His debut album, ‘Curtis’ —released on his own Custom label—enters the charts in October. It contains frank, topical songs like “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go” and “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue.”

  • 1972: Curtis Mayfield hits #4 with “Freddie’s Dead (Theme from Superfly)”.

  • October 21, 1972: ‘Superfly’ tops the Billboard’s album chart for the first of four weeks. This soundtrack to a film about a Harlem drug dealer’s attempt at a final “big score” delivers two major hits: “Freddie’s Dead” (#2 R&B, #4 pop) and “Superfly” (#5 R&B, #8 pop).

  • August 1, 1974: Curtis Mayfield makes the pop Top Forty for the last time with “Kung Fu,” which precedes Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” by two months. However, he’ll crack the R&B Top Forty a dozen more times between 1974 and 1981.

  • July 1, 1975: One of Curtis Mayfield’s most unflinchingly realistic and downbeat message albums, ‘There’s No Place Like America Today’, is released.

  • October 1, 1982: ‘Honesty’, Curtis Mayfield’s strongest album in years, appears to positive reviews.

  • August 13, 1990: Curtis Mayfield is paralyzed from the neck down after high winds cause a lighting rig to fall on him at a concert in Brooklyn, New York.

  • March 1, 1993: People Get Ready: A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield (Shanachie Records) is released. Mayfield favorites are covered by Jerry Butler, Don Covay, Steve Cropper (of Booker T and the M.G.’s) and others.

  • March 1, 1994: Curtis Mayfield is give the Grammy Legend Award at a ceremony in New York. This same month, All Men Are Brothers: A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield (Warner Bros.)—featuring covers by Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, the Isley Brothers, Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton—is issued.

  • March 15, 1999: Curtis Mayfield is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the fourteenth annual induction dinner.

  • December 26, 1999: Curtis Mayfield dies in Roswell, Georgia.

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