The thing about Curtis Mayfield was……

…..he could make you feel whatever he was feeling when he wrote the song you’re listening to. Play “We’re a Winner” and you’ll believe that you’re a black American civil rights campaigner in the 1960s. Listen to “Superfly” and you instantly become a Harlem drug dealer in a 70s blaxploitation movie. And as for the sublime “People Get Ready” – I hear this on a Sunday morning and for about two minutes I feel, if not religious, then deeply spiritual. But not even this lyrical genius can bring Jesus into my life. And although I can feel (almost) religious in an empty church, I always feel like an atheist in a full one.