Percy Mayfield

As a songwriter, Percy Mayfield evinced a command of language and a deep, tragic understanding of love's mercurial, often contradictory emotions; as a vocalist, his personable, soulful delivery had all the comfort of a blazing fire on a cold night. As a solo artist, Mayfield was a fixture on the R&B singles chart in the early '50s, but even after the hits ended, his songs found favor with some of America's finest singers, notably Ray Charles, for whose Tangerine label Mayfield became an artist and staff writer in the early '60s. Charles' Tangerine period includes several Mayfield compositions, the best known of which is the rollicking "Hit the Road Jack."

Mayfield's most important work can be found on Specialty's two 25-song retrospectives, Poet of the Blues and Memory Pain. The highlight of the former collection is "Please Send Me Someone to Love," a #1 R&B single from 1950 that daringly complains of racial prejudice, a topic sensibly ignored at that time by black artists aiming to break into the pop charts. Poet's other tracks cover Mayfield's fertile 1950–54 period, when he had seven Top 10 R&B hits.

Opening with an alternate take of "Please Send Me Someone to Love," Memory Pain covers Mayfield's output from 1950 to 1957. Like Poet, Memory Pain includes some previously unissued sides as well as a demo for "Hit the Road, Jack" which alone is worth the price of admission.

Mayfield's current catalogue is rounded out by Percy Mayfield Live, an album assembled from performances recorded in a California nightclub between 1981 and 1983. "Please Send Me Someone to Love" is beautifully rendered here, and "Strange Things Happening" and "P.M. Blues" have their moments as well. Mayfield was in his early sixties during this time, and although his voice shows the effects of age and hard living, his phrasing remains sly and sharp. He died a year after the last of these tracks was recorded, on August 12, 1984, at age 64. Mayfield also recorded for Chess, Cash, Imperial, Tangerine, RCA, Brunswick, and, for one Johnny "Guitar" Watson–produced single in 1974, Atlantic. Unfortunately, nothing remains in print from those affiliations. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide