Кертис Мэйфилд проложил свой путь к успеху — а затем

Curtis Mayfield didn't wait for the music industry to hand him power. He built his own: a publishing company, a record label called Curtom, and a studio in Chicago. Then he carried all of it into Hollywood, where Super Fly outsold the film it was written for and "Freddie's Dead" was ruled ineligible for an Oscar. This is the story of the ten people who stood beside him on that route, and what each of them paid along the way. It starts with Jerry Butler, whose name a label printed above his friends' in 1958. It runs through Major Lance and Okeh's dance-floor hits, and Eddie Thomas, the man who drove the Impressions' car and gave Curtom half its name. Donny Hathaway and Leroy Hutson learned their craft inside the label before the industry scattered them. Then come the films. Gordon Parks Jr. raised Super Fly's budget from eighteen Harlem investors. Gladys Knight & the Pips took Claudine to number one, and then the album went out of print. The Staple Singers topped the charts on a label that had lost the bidding for them. Aretha Franklin sang Sparkle, a film she never appears in. And Curtis himself recorded his final album lying on his back after a stage accident in Brooklyn took everything but his voice. It's a story about ownership, credit, and the names that never made it onto the label. On Better Soul, we tell the full account. Which of these ten names was new to you? Tell us in the comments. #CurtisMayfield #Superfly #SoulMusic #Curtom #MusicHistory