Click to return to Dave’s Music Database home page.

Released: September 1970


Rating: 4.570 (average of 10 ratings)


Genre: R&B


Quotable: “practically the Sgt. Pepper’s album of ‘70s soul” – Bruce Eder, All Music Guide


Album Tracks:

  1. Don’t Worry, if There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go
  2. The Other Side of Town
  3. The Makings of You
  4. We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue
  5. Move on Up
  6. Miss Black America
  7. Wild and Free
  8. Give It Up


Sales:

sales in U.S. only ½ million
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated ½ million


Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 19
peak on U.K. album chart 30


Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Don’t Worry… (11/28/70) #29 US, #3 RB
  • Move on Up (7/31/71) #12 UK


Notes: “In the fall of 2000, Rhino Records reissued Curtis with upgraded sound and nine bonus tracks that extended its running time to over 70 minutes. All but one are demos, including ‘Miss Black America’ and ‘The Making of You,’ but mostly consist of tracks that he completed for subsequent albums; they’re fascinating to hear, representing very different, much more jagged and stripped-down sounds” (Eder). Those tracks are “Power to the People,” “Underground,” “Ghetto Child,” “Readings in Astrology,” and “Suffer.” “The upgraded CD concludes with the single version of ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We're All Going to Go’” (Eder).


Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more.


Curtis
Curtis Mayfield
Review:
“The first solo album by the former leader of the Impressions, Curtis represented a musical apotheosis for Curtis Mayfield – indeed, it was practically the Sgt. Pepper’s album of ‘70s soul, helping with its content and its success to open the whole genre to much bigger, richer musical canvases than artists had previously worked with. All of Mayfield’s years of experience of life, music, and people were pulled together into a rich, powerful, topical musical statement that reflected not only the most up-to-date soul sounds of its period, finely produced by Mayfield himself, and the immediacy of the times and their political and social concerns, but also embraced the most elegant R&B sounds out of the past” (Eder).

“As a producer, Mayfield embraced the most progressive soul sounds of the era, stretching them out compellingly on numbers like Move on Up, but also drew on orchestral sounds (especially harps), to achieve some striking musical timbres (check out Wild and Free), and wove all of these influences, plus the topical nature of the songs, into a neat, amazingly lean whole” (Eder).

“There was only one hit single off of this record, (Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Down Below We’re All Going to Go, which made number three, but the album as a whole was a single entity and really had to be heard that way” (Eder).


Review Source(s):


Last updated March 24, 2009.