Alma vagabunda

Curtis Mayfield was one of the most influential performers and composers in the history of American popular music, decisively inspiring artists of such varied styles as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, and the pioneers of hip hop. His vindictive lyrics had the same liberating effect on soul and rhythm & blues as Dylan's on pop, but perhaps even more important was his role as a social reference and the weight that his music had on the Civil Rights Movement. "People Get Ready" was the anthem of black America in the 1960s, while its soundtrack for the film Super Fly captured one of the most incisive portraits of life in the ghettos of the 1970s. Passionate, meticulous, enlightening and absorbing, Alma vagabunda is the best vindication of her enormous legacy. Born into abject poverty and raised by his single mother in one of Chicago's worst neighborhoods, Curtis Mayfield became a musical prodigy, not just as a singer in a gospel group, but as a completely self-taught guitarist and songwriter. Having risen to fame as the main creative force of the trio The Impressions and as one of the great architects of the "Chicago Soul" sound, Curtis also stood out as a pioneer of the African American industry by founding his own record label, from which he would produce and compose for numerous artists including The Staple Singers, Aretha Franklin, and Baby Huey. In 1970, after more than a decade of success at the head of the Impressions, he embarked on a solo career that would make him one of the most popular musicians of the decade thanks to records such as Curtis, Roots, Back to the World and the band. Super Fly sound. A tragic accident at the age of forty-eight left him a quadriplegic, separating him from public life until his death in 1999. Perhaps this fact, added to the discretion and zeal for his privacy that he displayed throughout his life, explains the scarcity of bibliography on his figure. With the Wandering Soul, Todd Mayfield amends this outrage by narrating the gripping story of his father in live detail and returning him to the foreground that he should never have left.