Fighting The Odds Curtis Mayfield Doesn’t Let A Paralyzing Accident Get In The Way Of His Music

Singer Curtis Mayfield was always a role model for R&B artists, but now he’s a role model for anyone fighting a physical handicap. Mayfield’s spine was crushed in a stage accident that left him paralyzed six years ago, yet he has defied the odds to complete a new album that many thought was impossible.

Mayfield once spurred the civil rights generation with his song “People Get Ready,” then fueled young rappers’ imaginations with “Superfly,” but he’s now outdone himself.

His new album, “New World Order,” is filled with quietly dignified, often profound anthems of peace, unity and optimism, as well as love songs with that sweet Mayfield touch of old. The title track is also in the coming Spike Lee film, “Get on the Bus,” about the Million Man March on Washington. “There’s still light in the world, come rejoice with me - it’s a new day,” Mayfield sings.

Now 54, Mayfield had to make the album while lying on his back because he was too weak to sit up. To have it turn out so beautifully - aided by guests from Aretha Franklin to Mavis Staples - is cause for joy.

“I finally got my strength up to take a real try at it,” Mayfield says. “Creativities started to flow - and we were quite pleasantly surprised,” he adds, referring to the album’s producers, who included Narada Michael Walden, Organized Noize (the team that did TLC’s “Waterfalls”) and Darryl Simmons of LaFace Records.

“I’m a quadriplegic, so I have very little, if any, diaphragm. Just for me to cough or blow my nose, I need assistance. My lungs are very weak in a sitting position, but of course that changes when I lie down on my back. I’m lying down talking to you now,” he says in a recent interview via an office intercom in Los Angeles.

Another person might be bitter if faced with the circumstances of Mayfield, who was hit by a falling lighting truss dislodged during a thunderstorm at a Brooklyn concert. But Mayfield has refused to indulge in self-pity - and you won’t find any of that on the new record.

“We’re all human beings, so we can get angry or bitter or mad, but for me it doesn’t last too long,” says Mayfield. “I’d rather be humble and cry tears of joy than to take on the stress and burdens of being dogged-out and negative. First of all, it’s not good for you mentally or in your body. In my opinion, if you allow yourself to drop off into that sickness, then you might just as well be on some hard drugs.

“I like to be able to look back on most things, even when they’re negative, and be able to laugh about them,” he adds.

Mayfield’s power of positive thinking appears on such songs as “Back to Living Again” (“If you’re feeling inferior, make yourself superior … Now is the right time with something positive in your mind”), “Just a Little Bit of Love” (with some rapping from his 14-year-old son, Blaise) and the climactic “Oh So Beautiful,” with the simple but inspiring verse: “Never forget the life we live is oh so beautiful.”

“If we as people can find a way to live and let live, then it really is a beautiful world,” he says.

“I came up in the church and I’ve always been about humbling myself,” explains Mayfield, a Chicago native who sang in gospel groups before joining the Impressions with Jerry Butler and scoring such hits as “Amen,” “Gypsy Woman,” “It’s All Right” and “Keep on Pushing.”

Mayfield still has a smooth-as-silk tenor voice. The accident has limited some of his high range, but he has compensated remarkably. “I’ve come down an awful lot in range, but funny enough, it’s now in the range of how I used to sing when I was with the Impressions. Some might say that was my best time of vocalizing. I kind of fell back into singing in the style of a ‘Gypsy Woman’ or ‘People Get Ready.’ That alignment, and singing in those keys, worked very well for me.”

Mayfield will never again perform onstage but concludes, “I’ve still got 36 years of professional wisdom in the business and still kind of like myself in the studio. I proved a lot of things to myself with this record. I had some great times.”