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Percy Mayfield

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Wikimp3 information about the music of Percy Mayfield. On our website we have 33 albums and 70 collections of artist Percy Mayfield. You can find useful information and download songs of this artist. We also know that Percy Mayfield represents Blues genres.

Biography

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A masterful songwriter whose touching blues ballad "Please Send Me Someone to Love," a multi-layered universal lament, was a number one R&B hit in 1950, Percy Mayfield had the world by the tail until a horrific 1952 auto wreck left him facially disfigured. That didn't stop the poet laureate of the blues from writing in a prolific fashion, though. As Ray Charles' favorite scribe during the '60s, he handed the Genius such gems as "Hit the Road Jack" and "At the Club."

Like so many of his postwar L.A. contemporaries, Mayfield got his musical start in Texas but moved to the coast during the war. Surmising that Jimmy Witherspoon might like to perform a tune he'd penned called "Two Years of Torture," Mayfield targeted Supreme Records as a possible buyer for his song. But the bosses at Supreme liked his own gentle reading so much that they insisted he wax it himself in 1947 with an all-star band that included saxophonist Maxwell Davis, guitarist Chuck Norris, and pianist Willard McDaniel.

Art Rupe's Specialty logo signed Mayfield in 1950 and he scored a solid string of R&B smashes over the next couple of years. "Please Send Me Someone to Love" and its equally potent flip "Strange Things Happening" were followed in the charts by "Lost Love," "What a Fool I Was," "Prayin' for Your Return," "Cry Baby," and "Big Question," cementing Mayfield's reputation as a blues balladeer of the highest order. Davis handled sax duties on most of Mayfield's Specialty sides as well. Mayfield's lyrics were usually as insightfully downbeat as his tempos; he was a true master at expressing his innermost feelings, laced with vulnerability and pathos (his "Life Is Suicide" and "The River's Invitation" are two prime examples).

Even though his touring was drastically curtailed after the accident, Mayfield hung in there as a Specialty artist through 1954, switching to Chess in 1955-1956 and Imperial in 1959. Charles proved thankful enough for Mayfield's songwriting genius to sign him to his Tangerine logo in 1962; over the next five years, the singer waxed a series of inexorably classy outings, many with Brother Ray's band (notably "My Jug and I" in 1964 and "Give Me Time to Explain" the next year). It's a rare veteran blues artist indeed who hasn't taken a whack at one or more Mayfield copyrights. Mayfield himself persisted into the '70s, scoring minor chart items for RCA and Atlantic while performing on a limited basis until his 1984 death.

Title: Hit The Road Jack

Artist: Percy Mayfield

Genre: Blues

Title: Cry Baby

Artist: Percy Mayfield

Genre: Blues, Jazz

Title: My Heart

Artist: Percy Mayfield

Genre: Soul

Title: Blue Me Away

Artist: Percy Mayfield

Genre: Blues

Collections

Title: A Taste of Honey

Genre: Pop

Featuring albums

Title: Jukebox Mambo

Artist: Various Artists

Genre: Blues

Title: Anthology

Artist: Bobby Womack

Genre: Hip Hop/R&B

Title: Blue Notes

Artist: Various Artists

Genre: Blues

Title: The Womack 'Live'

Artist: Bobby Womack

Genre: Soul

Genres