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Monday, December 27, 1999

'Superfly' soul singer dies in Georgia hospital

Curtis Mayfield continued to work after being paralyzed in 1990 stage accident

Associated Press
 

   ATLANTA - Soul singer and songwriter Curtis Mayfield, whose work introduced a social conscience into black music at the height of the civil rights movement and who continued to make music for a decade after an accident left him paralyzed, died Sunday. He was 57.
   Mayfield's string of hits included "Gypsy Woman," the gospel-tinged "People Get Ready," the rallying cry "Keep On Pushing" and the funk classic "Superfly."
   Warner Bros. Records spokeswoman Karen Lee announced the death Sunday. A nurse at the North Fulton Regional Hospital in Roswell confirmed that Mayfield died there Sunday morning.
   The exact cause of his death was not immediately available.
   An onstage accident in 1990 left Mayfield paralyzed from the neck down, a condition that caused his health to deteriorate in recent years. Doctors amputated his right leg last year because of diabetes brought on by the injury.
   Mayfield was too ill to attend a March ceremony in which he was inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He became a Grammy Legend Award winner in 1994 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner the next year.
   In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, Mayfield said he was happy his songs had touched so many people.
   "I wrote them for myself," he said. "Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women's rights, I wrote about what was important to me."
  
  

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