The period following the RCA recordings in the early 70's saw Percy Mayfield once again slip into obscurity and poverty; there was, however, one final chapter to his career. In the early 80's Bay Area blues musician Marc Naftlin discovered that Percy was living in the East Bay somewhere and was able to provide Percy with a sensitive band and an appreciative audience for live performances around several Marin County and East Bay clubs. The songs on the live disc are extracted from some of those shows between 1981 and 1983. The exposure also led to this 1982 Timeless studio date with the excellent Phillip Walker Blues Band. Percy sounds old on these recordings and his baritone has slipped to the very bottom of the range, but he also sounds very happy to be performing too. It's nice to know that his final chapter included some long overdue appreciation and love from the Bay Area Blues community, even if the national recognition he so richly deserved never came.
The period following the RCA recordings in the early 70's saw Percy Mayfield once again slip into obscurity and poverty; there was, however, one final chapter to his career. In the early 80's Bay Area blues musician Marc Naftlin discovered that Percy was living in the East Bay somewhere and was able to provide Percy with a sensitive band and an appreciative audience for live performances around several Marin County and East Bay clubs. The songs on the live disc are extracted from some of those shows between 1981 and 1983. The exposure also led to this 1982 Timeless studio date with the excellent Phillip Walker Blues Band. Percy sounds old on these recordings and his baritone has slipped to the very bottom of the range, but he also sounds very happy to be performing too. It's nice to know that his final chapter included some long overdue appreciation and love from the Bay Area Blues community, even if the national recognition he so richly deserved never came.
14 comments:
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Thanks for these rare gems KC
It completes the story and despite the ravages of age on his vocal abilities , he still retains his distinctive timbre - He remains a legend !
Cheers
thank you very much for percy's final chapters, KC!
he certainly has good backing in the phillip walker band, and i'm glad he got some recognition in his later years.
Another K.O. from KC.
We never knew.....
well - I never knew.
Thank you
thank you! everything I have heard from percy so far has been good. looking forward to this.
Thank you for posting so much of Mayfield's music over the past two years and, equally important, for the quality and breadth of the background you provided with each post. I had read about but knew little of Mayfield's music before discovering this blog and the Crypt, and I now wonder how that was possible given his voice and ability to write.
It may sound facile but this blog has truly enriched my knowledge, understanding, and enjoyment of the music it showcases. Equally important, it has allowed me to show my children the roots of their music and, too, why I am so passionate about artists like Wilson Pickett, Otis Clay, Etta James, Diana Washington, and so many other artists they would not have otherwise have heard because I wore out my vinyl years ago. There are simply no bad posts on this blog, Buddy Bolden's and the Crypt Redux, and I can't thank you and the other contributors enough for the information and music you have shared.
It is regrettable and just foolish that the music industry doesn't understand that blogs like this promote sales by introducing people like me to music we would not have otherwise heard and, consequently, prompting us less knowledgeable folk to further explore the artists and musicians by buying more from their available catalogs.
Unlike forty years ago, contemporary radio stations with their restricted genres only play commercially successful music and aren't as adventurous or bold as so many FM stations once were. Were it not for what I play at home, my children's tastes would be much narrower than mine or certainly the more refined and informed tastes of the far more knowledgeable contributors to this blog like you, Guitar Gus, Preselves, Grumpy, Poppachubby, and others whom I have inadvertently left out because of my lack of memory rather than their lack of importance.
Continued - The record companies play it safe nowadays. In the wonderful book you recommended, The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll, Charlie Gillett writes about the era in which record companies competed with each other to sign new acts when they finally realized that rock and roll was not an ephemeral fad. In particular, he writes about the financial risks the companies took, gambles that were often not successful, on new acts and the willingness they afforded those acts to develop over a series of recordings until they could attract an audience and achieve some commercial success. The music industry is no longer willing to take such risks and, were it not for the Internet and blogs like this, the music would probably be relegated to memory and nostalgia. What a loss of cultural treasures and invaluable social and cultural history that would be.
Several years ago while returning home from work, I met a musician with a trumpet on the subway and asked him what kind of music he played. He responded jazz and I asked what kind. He said smooth jazz and when I began discussing the genres I liked, such as bop and modal, and musicians like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Sonny Stitt, etc., he informed me that he had never heard of them. His historical knowledge of the music ended with George Benson yet he earned a living supposedly playing jazz. l soon realized that I might as well have been telling him about Rudee Vallee. Conversely, while waiting at the credit union four years ago to speak with a loan officer, I and my middle daughter met a local musician in his seventies who had played with many of the greats in jazz and rhythm and blues when they gigged in the D. C. area. We ended up postponing our respective appointments with bank personnel so we could drink the credit union's free quality coffee, talk music, an , best of all, he could tell my daughter and me about playing with Gil Scott Heron, Shirley Horn, etc. and, of course, share some interesting stories about his experiences. When we finished our conversation, he remarked that he has greatly enjoyed speaking with us appreciated my passion for the music. He agreed wholeheartedly with my banal and obvious statement that jazz was a unique creation of this country and warranted regard as our "classical" music. More importantly, he expressed surprise and joy when my then-teenage daughter about the jazz and rhythm and blues singers and musicians that she enjoys. He wistfully commented that he had not met many young people who were interested in the music that was his passion and the basis for his employment for decades and he was truly glad to have spoken with us for over an hour.
Continued - My daughter later commented that he seemed genuinely surprised that she had been exposed to so much of the music that is only heard on a limited number of shows on a few college or smaller radio stations in the inner city. In fact, he had told her that she had been fortunate to have been raised in a home in which the music was still played. As I have previously written, my understanding of music history, the technical aspects of the music, and, in particular, the less commercial deep southern soul and rhythm and blues is very limited so the point of the two anecdotes is not to illustrate my depth of knowledge, rather they reflect that there is a real paucity of stations and venues in which unsophisticated or knowledgeable, albeit eager, listeners like me one can hear the music that is offered in copious amounts on this and the other blogs that you all have created. Worse, because of severe financial constraints and the need to be brutally pragmatic, many public schools have cut the musical departments, classes, and music lessons that were readily available when I was young. If, like me, one no longer has the expendable income to go to jazz clubs and other smaller venues to hear and explore live music, one simply doesn't hear much of the music because it's not getting much airplay.
Continued - In short, it is this and its sister blogs that introduced me to Marva Wright, Snooks Eaglin, James Carr, James Booker, Esquerita and others. Despite my verbosity, I try previously to limit the number of comments to posts because, lacking a musical background and only having a gut appreciation for the music, I fear being redundant, inaccurate, or foolish but I am not being obsequious or insincere when I write that I eagerly access all three blogs daily to listen, read, and learn. On many days, I feel like I should be paying at least a nominal fee for tuition because of the labor and time spent by you and others to research, write, and post.
Each night after work my wife heads for the television and I head for the computer and then the stereo. She enjoys much of what I listen to but when I begin frothing at the mouth and become insensate to other activity in the world because I am deeply lost in music, she fears contracting musical rabies from me. But there is that one daughter, the one who cites Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday as two of her all-time favorites, who has contracted a milder form of the disease from me, who takes the time to listen to what I have downloaded from the blogs or selected from my own collection each day. So I thank you on her behalf as well.
As for my other daughter, she asked me to burn some contemporary alleged rhythm and blues music for her and her friends and provided me with a list of songs that they wanted burned on their copies. For the most part, I complied with the request for songs from Beyonce and lesser talented singers, however, to quote the late Peter Tosh, you can't blame the youth, so in the later tracks of each disc I included songs by James Brown, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Gil Scott Heron, Mavis Staples, or Irma Thomas. When the "youth" retrieved their newly burned discs and sequestered themselves to my daughters' bedroom to listen to the pounding, monotonous beat and, at best, mediocre or maudlin lyrics, I waited patiently in the parlor with a Cheshire cat grin on my face. Knowing that look and what it means, my wife pointedly asked me what was going on and I answered, "Just wait". After twenty five minutes of the repetitious drum machine thumping coming through the ceiling, Mr. Brown began pleading for my daughter and the other young women to please, please don't go. By the second verse, I heard through the ceiling a collective and perturbed, "What is this .... " and before they could insert expletives, I bellowed. "You are listening to the superior originators of your music. Without the one, there would not be the other, so listen and appreciate." Instead, they opted to leave, but I live to fight another day. Education comes in small steps unless one reads about and listens to the music on this blog. This blog provides the fuel for further ventures in the teaching of history and my fervent hope is that, after I am gone, my youngest daughter will someday have an epiphany and tell herself, "So that's what he was trying to do." I'll leave her my well-read copy of Gillett to guide her and hope that resources will be as easily available to her as they are on this blog to me and others. Mayfield having the courage to perform after the disfiguring accident that marred his face robbing him of his good... he and others on this blog who worked so hard and often under considerable adversity to hone and practice their craft and, at least for me, provided and provide so many moments of rapturous joy need to be remembered and, more importantly, garner new fans. I am already thinking of what I'll include on the next CD my youngest more conventional daughter asks me to burn; it will be classic rhythm and blues or soul and it will definitely surpass anything she currently listens to. I think it high time to introduce her to Mr. Mayfield.
Ahh Felimid, you warm this old heart and remind of why I do this (something I have regular crises regarding) to know that you and your children have been enriched is quite a special reward indeed. Along with the personal gains and enrichments like doing the research and increasing my own knowledge so as not to embarrass myself too often, and the access to a world of collectors and collections that are so much more powerful than any one of us could ever be, there is lying underneath those things the desire to reach and educate those sympathetic souls who share the dis-satisfaction with the current soul-less blather foisted on the public as music today and look for something with more substance.
Cliff and I have often wondered what those who have grown up in the last 10-15 years in particular will do for nostalgic music as they grow older -- will they reach back beyond their own generation for their adult listening? will they just stay in the now of whatever is current? will they have terrible, shallow taste forever? will they grow to adulthood with little long-term connection to music at all? Given the the Global village effect of the internet on Pop culture, are we destined to a future where the sterilized sameness will creep across the music palate taking bits and pieces from everywhere but leaving us all with a soul-less, region-less, mess with no particular genres or even regional styles?
Once the baby boomers die out will there be any call for the rich and wonderful wealth of historic reissues in all genres that we have so painstakingly produced over the last 20 years? It seems unlikely that most of the music explored on this family of blogs will ever be issued again once our generation has died off 20 years from now. This technological era has been an incredible boon to all us old collectors who have been able to parlay this into collections beyond anything previously possible without great wealth. There are currently enough of us around, with enough disposable income, to make the waves of obscure re-issues a profitable venture -- who buys them when we are gone? I remember how difficult it was in the 60's and 70's to find older music and specific genre's. Once this golden age of targeted reissues has passed with us, it is unlikely that this music will be available outside of University collections.
Wow, Hit The Road Again is terrific. Credit to Philip Walker because it's hard to imagine a more sympathetic context and Percy is clearly in his element.
It did remind me a bit of those final recordings by Billie Holliday when her voice was shredded but still strangely hypnotic - there's something just a little macabre in listening to those tracks. Nothing so extreme here but just a hint of a great voice becoming ghostly. But, heh heh I repeat myself, wow.
Many thanks.
Don't know if there's any need to comment after reading the above commnets...it's mentioned, and I have had the thoughts and/o fears - what will people of a certain age look back on in 10 or 20 years - the 'great' work of (fill in a blank) and how they really looked good on (fill in some reality program) and.....
As to the record companies - and this has been beaten, but not to death because the problem still exists - they claim such an dsuch creates a loss of revenue. It's been said before - if there's nothing "new" that I want to purchase - of course it's going to create a loss of revenue. Stranger still, because we know they must look at some of these, they don't license a/o re-release some of the ones that sell well to people in the States - - - that have to order them from overseas. A good number of the wonderful compilations that you've shared on this blog, for instance, obviously were and are released in England....and it would be easy for me to purchase them in a record store...oops I'm showing my age because I used the term record store...I just don't want to go into my local big box store to buy the 'bonus' disc package of somebody that I don't care to listen to in the first place.
As to this posting - and, as it has been said before, the wonderful information provided - I was aware, to some small degree, of Mayfield's music - but was completely unaware of his history and a good 90% of his material - and have to thank, as I have called this, The King And His Court for their help.
Thanks, as always, for these blogs
G
Wow ! Thanks for your comments FO'B - (FOB from now on) - To take the time to give us all an insight to your inner-life and how much music has enhanced this is just great ! I'm a gut-guy too so any musical snobbery is beyond me - I appreciate your thoughts and anecdotes with relish - Really ! -
Cheers
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