Most lists of the best Curtis Mayfield albums put Super Fly at the top and stop thinking. It is a brilliant record, but it is a soundtrack, built around someone else’s film, and it is not the purest statement of what Mayfield could do on his own terms. That record came two years earlier, and it opens with a bassline, a scream and a warning about hell.
Mayfield left the Impressions in 1970 and spent the next six years making some of the most intelligent soul music ever put on tape, almost all of it for his own Chicago label, Curtom. What follows is a ranking of the seven solo LPs that matter most, with the session details and catalogue numbers that matter if you are buying on vinyl. No compilations, and one record that came much later than the rest.
The best Curtis Mayfield albums, ranked
Our ordering of the best Curtis Mayfield albums puts songs first, then performance, then how the records sound. Chart positions are there for context, not as a verdict.
1. Curtis (1970)
Recorded at RCA’s Chicago studio between May and July 1970 and released that September as Curtom CRS 8005, Curtis is the sound of a songwriter who had spent a decade writing three-minute civil rights hymns for the Impressions suddenly allowing himself eight minutes and an orchestra. “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go” sets the terms: fuzz bass, congas, strings that sound like alarm sirens and a falsetto that never once raises its voice. “Move On Up” runs to almost nine minutes on the album, and the single edit reached number 12 in the UK in 1971, which explains why British DJs still treat it as a dancefloor standard alongside the records in our northern soul guide.
The album topped Billboard’s soul LP chart and reached 19 on the pop chart. Its secret weapon is balance. “The Makings of You” and “Give It Up” are pure romance, “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue” is a sermon, and none of it feels like a change of subject. If you only buy one, buy this.
2. Super Fly (1972)
Released on 11 July 1972 (Curtom CRS 8014-ST), the soundtrack to Gordon Parks Jr.’s film went to number one on the Billboard 200, and it outsold the film it was written for. The singles did the heavy lifting: “Freddie’s Dead” reached number 4 on the Hot 100 and “Superfly” number 8.
The band is the story here. Johnny Pate arranged, with Phil Upchurch and Craig McMullen on guitars, Joseph “Lucky” Scott on bass and Morris Jennings on drums, recorded between Curtom’s own studio in Chicago and Bell Sound in New York. “Pusherman” is a masterclass in how much tension a groove can hold without ever resolving. The reason it sits second rather than first is simple: Mayfield wrote it to frame a story about a dealer, and his own voice comes through slightly less directly than on Curtis. If your taste runs to the harder end of the records in our essential funk 45s, you may well flip the top two.
3. There’s No Place Like America Today (1975)
The forgotten masterpiece, and the most unsettling record among the best Curtis Mayfield albums. The sleeve uses Margaret Bourke-White’s 1937 photograph from the Louisville flood, a queue of Black flood victims under a billboard reading “There’s no way like the American way”. Mayfield turns the slogan inside out for the title, and the music matches: slow, sparse, almost funereal funk. “Billy Jack” and “Hard Times” are among the bleakest songs he wrote, and “So in Love” arrives like a reprieve.
It stalled at 120 on the Billboard 200 and 13 on the soul chart. Do not let that put you off. It was issued as Curtom CU 5001, after the label had moved its distribution away from Buddah, and it rewards the patience it demands.
4. Curtis/Live! (1971)
Recorded in January 1971 at the Bitter End in New York, a club holding about 230 people, and released that May as a double LP. It is the only concert record among the best Curtis Mayfield albums, and the band is small: Craig McMullen on rhythm guitar, Lucky Scott on bass, Tyrone McCullen on drums and Henry Gibson on percussion. Stripped of the strings, the songs reveal how much of the arrangement lived in Mayfield’s guitar. The new readings of “People Get Ready” and “We’re a Winner” are the reason to own it, and the between-song chat is warmer than you expect.
5. Roots (1971)
Issued in October 1971, Roots reached number 6 on the R&B album chart. Johnny Pate and Riley Hampton share arranging duties, and the result is lusher than Curtis without going soft. “Get Down” is a sly, slinky groove, “Keep On Keeping On” one of his great pep talks, and “We Got to Have Peace” is the Impressions’ idealism carried into the 1970s. Only seven songs, and every one of them earns its length.
6. Back to the World (1973)
Released in May 1973, this was Mayfield’s first studio album after Super Fly, and it went to number one on the R&B album chart. Rich Tufo took over arranging, and the sound gets glossier. The title track, about soldiers coming home from Vietnam to a country that does not want them, is the emotional centre. “Future Shock” is the one DJs still reach for. The ideas are as sharp as ever, but the record sometimes feels like Mayfield repeating a formula he had perfected a year earlier.
7. New World Order (1996)
In August 1990 a lighting rig fell on Mayfield at an outdoor concert in Brooklyn and left him paralysed from the neck down. New World Order, released on Warner Bros. on 1 October 1996, was made anyway: his vocals were recorded line by line while he lay on his back. Narada Michael Walden and Organized Noize were among the producers. It is uneven, as comeback records usually are, but the title track and “Back to Living Again” are as graceful as anything he cut in the 1970s, and the album earned a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album. He died in December 1999.
Which pressings to look for
Ranking the best Curtis Mayfield albums is the easy part. Finding a copy that sounds right is where collectors get caught out. Early Curtom LPs were distributed by Buddah and carry CRS numbers; from 1973 the label moved its distribution to Warner Bros. and later RSO, and the numbering changed with it.
- Curtis: CRS 8005 (1970)
- Curtis/Live!: CRS 8008 (1971)
- Roots: CRS 8009 (1971)
- Super Fly: CRS 8014-ST (1972)
- Back to the World: CRS 8015 (1973)
- There’s No Place Like America Today: CU 5001 (1975)
First pressings of Curtis and Super Fly were made in big numbers, so a good one should not cost a fortune. Check the run-out matrix against the catalogue number and play the quiet passages before you pay; Mayfield’s mixes leave a lot of air around the voice, and surface noise sits right in it. Later reissues vary widely, and our rundown of soul reissue labels explains how to tell a reissue cut from the original tapes from one mastered off a CD. The Wikipedia page for the Super Fly soundtrack is a useful starting point for the personnel, and the one for Curtis covers the recording dates.
Where to go next
If the best Curtis Mayfield albums have you hooked, the obvious next step is backwards, into the Impressions’ ABC singles, where most of his themes were first worked out. The less obvious one is sideways, into the Curtom roster he produced for others. And if what grabbed you was the slow, aching side of There’s No Place Like America Today, the ballads in our pick of deep soul 45s are the right company for it.
Curtis Mayfield on record: quick answers
What is Curtis Mayfield’s best album?
Of the best Curtis Mayfield albums, we rate Curtis (1970) as his finest, for its range and for the clearest expression of his own voice. Super Fly (1972) was the bigger seller and the only one to top the Billboard 200.
Who played on Super Fly?
Johnny Pate arranged the record, with Phil Upchurch and Craig McMullen on guitar, Joseph “Lucky” Scott on bass and Morris Jennings on drums, plus Mayfield himself on guitar and vocals.
Is There’s No Place Like America Today worth buying?
Yes. It sold poorly in 1975 and is still overlooked, but it is one of the most powerful soul albums of the decade, and the record that best shows how far he pushed soul beyond the dancefloor.