Remarkably, such despair has been rare for Mayfield in the six years since a freak onstage accident left him a quadriplegic. After a lifetime of creating hits, including "Superfly" and "People Get Ready," and singing them in his sweet, piercing falsetto, Mayfield was temporarily left unable to breathe on his own, let alone belt out a tune. Yet he has come to terms with his condition—and even triumphed over it. Last October he released his first original album since the accident, New World Order. It has sold 300,000 copies and will be up for two Grammy Awards at the Feb. 26 ceremony. "I never had any anger as to why I had to be the one. Never," says Mayfield, 54, of his paralysis. "I don't have to accept it, I must accept it."
It has been a long journey back from that windy August afternoon in 1990, when Mayfield was to appear at Wingate Field in Brooklyn before 10,000 fans. "The emcee calls my name," he recalls, "and I put my guitar over my neck and began to climb the stairs. That's all I remember. I have no memory of anything striking me." At the moment he climbed onto the stage, the light rigging, unmoored by the gusting winds, toppled onto Mayfield. His spinal cord was injured at the fourth vertebra. "When I came to, I found myself sprawled out on the floor like a rag doll," he says. "My hands, in comparison to where I thought I was, weren't there. Immediately I realized I was paralyzed." He was rushed to Kings County Hospital, where doctors inserted a ventilator tube into his throat to keep him breathing. Over the next several weeks, despite a bout with pneumonia, Mayfield remained mentally strong. "I would visit him in the hospital, and tears would well up in my eyes," says his wife, Altheida, "and he'd just wink at me."
Three weeks after the accident, he was moved for 3½ months to Shepherd Center in Atlanta, where he underwent an operation to stabilize his neck and head. "The drive to get back to his music helped keep his hope alive," says Dr. David F. Apple Jr., medical director at the center. Working with physical therapists, Mayfield gradually learned to breathe without the ventilator, but as time passed he gave up hope that he would ever regain use of his limbs. "You only have a certain amount of time in which it's possible for feelings to come back," he says. "They never did for me."
As soon as Mayfield returned home in December, Altheida, 40ish, became his primary, round-the-clock caregiver. She set up his hospital bed in the study and took courses at Shepherd on how to look after him. "She's my hero," says Mayfield. "I know I tire her out." Indeed, in 1992 she nearly burned the house down when, totally exhausted, she left a candle burning in her bedroom to tend to Curtis. Yet her commitment to him has never wavered. "He's still Curtis," she says. "He just can't walk. That doesn't change your feelings." His emotions are no less intense. "I love her very much," he says.
That other great passion in his life, his guitar, is now, sadly, of no use to him. "I loved my guitar so much," he says. "It was almost like another person." Mayfield can hardly remember a time when he didn't have a guitar under his arm. Born in Chicago in 1942, he was reared in the city's housing projects. Though his father was largely absent, his mother, Marion Pauline Washington, a retired postal sorter, instilled in him a love of poetry—from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Dr. Seuss. Young Curtis, who sang in a gospel choir, started writing music at 10 and dropped out of high school in 10th grade to join the group that eventually became the Impressions. As their lead singer and songwriter, he had hits with "Gypsy Woman" in 1961 and "Keep on Pushing" in 1964. In 1970 he left the group and started a solo career, achieving success with the 1972 movie soundtrack album to Superfly. He had just completed a follow-up album to Superfly at the time of his accident.
Though Mayfield won out-of-court settlements afterward, his paralysis remained a daunting obstacle to restarting his musical career. A month after leaving Shepherd, he returned—but only briefly—to the recording studio. "I had no idea I was so weak," he recalls. "I couldn't even cough. I couldn't belt out a song. It brought tears to my eyes. I guess I sort of avoided going back to the studio [after that] because of just basically not knowing how to overcome this." Altheida could do little to persuade him. "The more I tried to encourage him, the more he'd withdraw," she says. "So I just left him alone."
The real motivation to keep on pushing came in 1994, when an impressive roster of superstars—including Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen—released the album of his songs, All Men Are Brothers: A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield. "It was very much an inspiration," he says.
Though he found it difficult to compose without a guitar, Mayfield began collaborating with his then-assistant Rosemary Woods, a pianist who would input his melodies into a computer. He also started using voice-activated recorders to capture the fleeting ideas that had so often escaped him. Back in the studio in December 1995, "I found that lying down, when you can use gravity in your favor, allows me a little more strength," says Mayfield.
The six months he spent in the studio—working up to eight hours a day—became a true collaboration, with old friends Mavis Staples and Aretha singing background vocals and son Blaise, 15, contributing a rap on one track. (Mayfield has nine other children.) Physically, the process was draining. Sometimes it would take two or three hours for Mayfield to get his blood pressure high enough to head for the studio some 30 miles away, and more than once he blacked out while recording. ("He'd come up and go right back to what he was doing," says Altheida.) But the album, New World Order, was received so enthusiastically that director Spike Lee used its title track in his movie Get on the Bus. "I knew the obstacles he had to overcome to do what he did," says Lee. "But there was no slip-up at all." Still, Mayfield has no illusions about returning to live performing. "I'd never be able to do this onstage, I'm sorry to say. I'm not even going to say 'maybe one day' about that."
In fact, his injuries have forced him into a quiet routine with Altheida. Together, they make occasional shopping trips to local malls, and he has plenty of time to watch his beloved Chicago Bulls on a wide-screen TV in his study overlooking the Chattahoochee River. There, surrounded by family photos and a life's worth of music awards, Mayfield has found some peace—and little time to feel sorry for himself. "I've never gone to God for my paralysis," he says. "One thing I know is, God is a very busy God, and he may not come when you want him, but he's right on time."
THOMAS FIELDS-MEYER
MEG GRANT in Atlanta
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