People Get Ready
“People Get Ready” was written by Curtis Mayfield and recorded by The Impressions, released on ABC-Paramount Records in 1965. It peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The lyric builds from the image of a train leaving for a better place. No ticket needed. No baggage permitted. Just faith. The metaphor was drawn from the gospel music Mayfield grew up singing in church on Chicago’s north side. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called it the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement, using it both to carry marchers forward and to offer comfort when the road was at its hardest. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. Curtis Mayfield was 22 years old when he wrote it. It sounds like something that always existed.
Curtis Mayfield built a body of work with The Impressions that tracked the movement in real time. “Keep On Pushing” came in 1964, a message of encouragement pressed into three and a half minutes of soul. “People Get Ready” followed in 1965 with something more specific. Then in 1967 came “We’re a Winner,” which named Black pride plainly enough that several radio stations refused to broadcast it during the riots that year. Each song moved further into what equality actually meant. By 1972, Mayfield had gone solo and was scoring Super Fly, turning that same directness on the drug epidemic tearing apart the communities he had spent years trying to lift. The Super Fly soundtrack spent four weeks at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and outgrossed the film. The same voice that wrote about a train leaving for a better place was now writing about who got left behind.
Thirty-six years ago today, Curtis Mayfield was about to take the stage at Wingate Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn. New York State Senator Martin Markowitz was onstage beginning to introduce him when a second blast of wind shook loose a metal lighting rig above the stage. A stage light struck Mayfield in the back of the neck. He was paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors at Kings County Medical Center confirmed fractures in the third, fourth, and fifth vertebrae of his neck. He was 48 years old. The Impressions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In 1994, Mayfield received the Grammy Legend Award, making a surprise appearance onstage to join the chorus of “Amen.” In 1996, he completed New World Order, recording every vocal lying on his back. The album reached the Top 25 on the Billboard R&B chart and received three Grammy nominations, including Best R&B Album. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 1999. He never stopped making music.