The Impressions Fabulous - We're A Winner (CD)

About the time that the Impressions cut WE'RE A WINNER they were poised to take the biggest gamble of their stellar careers. Mayfield was in the process of creating the Curtom label and the group were about to relinquish the relative security of the giant ABC Records and go independent. This twofer, the last in the series, pairs THE FABULOUS IMPRESSIONS and WE'RE A WINNER. The first is a collection of classic Mayfield songs, some of which had previously been hits for Jerry Butler, Walter Jackson and the Fascinations plus the Impressions own hit singles You Always Hurt Me and I Can't Stay Away From You. Several tracks feature the dark brown lead of Sam Gooden for which this album is something of a showcase, inasmuch as he takes the lead as often as Curtis. FABULOUS also contains one of the lesser known Mayfield gems She Don't Love Me, a great ballad with an arrangement that takes on unexpected directions with superb vocal interchange by the trio.

We're A Winner was a huge hit single, reaching #1 position in the R&B charts and #14 in the Pop charts in January 1968. It was their biggest hit for five years. Despite some restrictions on airplay, the song's success proved unstoppable. Recorded just five months before the assassination of Martin Luther King, We're A Winner confidently showed the direction for civil rights to proceed.

Whilst the title track articulated the social conscience of young black America, the remaining songs examine that other great liberation, true love. Moonlight Shadows is a poetic sonnet and a reminder that the Impressions were, and remain, unmatched vocally and technically when it came to their rendition of Mayfield's love songs. The trio really had it down and the music that Curtis and Johnny Pate created is still unsurpassed.

Nothing Can Stop Me is the only song from their past, made famous by Gene Chandler in April 1965 (reaching #3 R&B / #18 Pop charts) followed by similar success in the UK. Pate's harder arrangement suits the Impressions' tight vocal routine as they deliver this superb treatment, which compares favourably to the original.

Romancing To The Folk Song could have been written for Chicago contemporary Terry Callier and acts as a showcase for Mayfield's beautifully understated guitar work, which is particularly evident on this album. When WINNER was originally released it topped the soul charts and went to #35 on Billboard's album chart in March '68, becoming their third largest career album. Kent's Impressions' series brings together the eight classic albums that remain vibrant like primary colours in the development of Chicago Soul to this day. They also trace the amazing development of Curtis Mayfield as an influential songwriter, singer and producer. He and the Impressions would go on to make many more great albums but none better than these.

The Impressions

Gypsy Woman

Without the richly burnished baritone leads of Jerry Butler, who had fronted their soulful breakthrough ballad For Your Precious Love (you'll find it on our 1958 disc), The Impressions were finding it hard to come up with a second hit. Butler had quit the Chicago group amidst jealousy from some members over Vee-Jay Records unexpectedly giving him featured billing on the single.

Chicago native Curtis Mayfield, all of 16 when he played guitar and sang high tenor behind The Ice Man on For Your Precious Love, took over lead duties for The Impressions. He'd attended Wells High School while living in Cabrini-Green, the massive housing project on Chicago's near North Side. Even before that, he doo-wopped with The Alphatones on the West Side and sang hymns with the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers. That's where he took up guitar, tuning his axe to a very unusual F# chord that gave Mayfield his highly distinctive sound.

The Impressions brought Fred Cash up from Chattanooga, Tennessee to replace Butler. He'd been in The Roosters there along with tenor-singing brothers Arthur and Richard Brooks and baritone Sam Gooden, who now comprised the rest of The Impressions. With Mayfield's airy high tenor out front, the quintet stuck around Vee-Jay's Abner label for a short while, but A&R man Calvin Carter didn't care for Curtis as a front man, so they were dropped. The Impressions made a single for Bandera Records, owned by Vi Muszynski, who had brought them to Vee-Jay in the first place, but Listen didn't reverse their fading fortunes. Curtis took a break to tour as Butler's guitarist, the pair co-writing three major R&B sellers for Jerry at Vee-Jay in 1960-61: the R&B chart-topping He Will Break Your Heart, Find Another Girl, and I'm A Telling You.

"In the writing of them, we would mess around, he would wind up singing the hook with me. So we decided to record 'em that way, and it turned out very well," says Butler. "I think a lot of that had to do with the way Curtis played guitar."

Eddie Thomas brought The Impressions to the major label ABC-Paramount, recording in New York with arranger/conductor Roy Glover, Jr., who decorated Mayfield's exotic Gypsy Woman with castanets and hushed backing. Cut in July of 1961, Gypsy Woman was a #2 R&B/#20 pop hit late that year (another Mayfield ballad, As Long As You Love Me, was its flip side). The Impressions were back.

Various Street Corner Symphonies 1961 Vol.13
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