Percy Mayfield

by Bill DahlA 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 didnt stop the poet laureate of the blues from writing in prolific fashion, though. As Ray Charless 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 hed 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 saxist Maxwell Davis, guitarist Chuck Norris, and pianist Willard McDaniel.Art Rupes 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 Mayfields reputation as a blues balladeer of the highest order. Davis handled sax duties on most of Mayfields Specialty sides as well. Mayfields 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 Rivers 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 1955-56 and Imperial in 1959. Charles proved thankful enough for Mayfields 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 Rays band (notably My Jug and I in 1964 and Give Me Time to Explain the next year).Its a rare veteran blues artist indeed who hasnt 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.