Curtis Mayfield may not be as famous as Sam Cooke and Al Green, but his voice is just as iconic and important. The Chicago-born singer who brought the world “Move On Up” and his delicious falsetto is a necessary songwriter and performer to remember.
Videos by American Songwriter
As such, we wanted to dive into what the singer has to say outside of his many songs (and the many he wrote for others). Indeed, what did Mayfield, who was born in 1942 and who passed away in 1999 at the age of 57, have to say about the world at large, about life and love, his craft, and more?
[RELATED: 15 of the Best Quotes by Carly Pearce]
Without further ado let’s dive into the best 20 Curtis Mayfield quotes.
1. “My teacher told me I’d never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.”
2. “Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women’s rights, I wrote about what was important to me.”
3. “Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness, and love… if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.”
4. “Maybe the words that I say is just another way to pray.”
5. “To talk about the ’60s almost brings tears to my eyes. What we did. What we all did. We changed the world.”
6. “How many 54-year-old quadriplegics are putting albums out? You just have to deal with what you got, try to sustain yourself as best you can, and look to the things that you can do.”
7. “When I was just coming up, I always wanted to be able to perform to a large crowd with a symphony.”
8. “My fights and arguments, even with God, went down on paper.”
9. “With all respect, I’m sure that we have enough preachers in the world. Through my way of writing, I was capable of being able to say these things and yet not make a person feel as though they’re being preached at.”
10. “I was writing songs from when I was 12. My songs always came from questions that I need answers for.”
11. “Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain.”
12. “I didn’t have to leave my neighborhood to be surrounded by the things that ‘Super Fly’ is about. It was easier than most scripts because it was about an environment that I knew.”
13. “Painless preaching is as good a term as any for what we do.”
14. “My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.”
15. “I used to love to sit and listen to the old people talk about yesterday. There’s a lot of good information there.”
16. “With a spinal cord injury, which most people don’t really know about… there are many, many complications that actually lead you through your life, and sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down.”
17. “I was a very observant child. Almost anything could become a song to me.”
18. “I don’t like to appoint myself to nothing, knowing I’m no better than anybody else. But it always makes me feel good to know I try to do the best I can, and those who might observe say, ‘Hey, I can take a little something from that person.'”
19. “This accident, or incident, happened in the most secure place I could have felt I was in: Walking onstage with my guitar, you know?”
20. “I think my grandmother was one of my biggest influences.”
Photo by Gilles Petard/Redferns
