![]() ![]() SAM GOODEN: He said, this particular song is a song that I think we should use to spread some of Dr. because the group was working too much to actually march with them. He said Mayfield wrote "We're A Winner" to help civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. So it was a treat to ask Sam Gooden, who sang alongside Mayfield and The Impressions, what inspired the song. It meant something to hear a melody pouring out of the radio, telling me equality was just around the corner. Lord have mercy, we're moving on up, moving on up.ĭEGGANS: I didn't know it then, but before "We're A Winner," there weren't many hit songs by Black artists telling Black people to be proud. MAYFIELD: (Singing) We're moving on up, moving on up. And even as a young Black child in Gary, Ind., I felt a dose of hope and pride from hearing lyrics like, never let anybody say, boy, you can't make it 'cause a feeble mind is in your way. And never let anybody say, well, you can't make it 'cause a feeble mind is in your way.ĭEGGANS: I was 2 years old when "We're A Winner" was first released, but I grew up in a home filled with Mayfield and The Impressions, thanks to my record-buying mother. NPR's Eric Deggans has this dispatch from 2019, when he went to Chicago to track down the story behind "We're A Winner."ĮRIC DEGGANS: It sounds like Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions recorded it during a party, but "We're A Winner" had a message as serious as death and taxes. All this week, to mark the Fourth of July holiday, we've been revisiting some of the songs that have become different sorts of American anthems. But it wasn't until the 1967 hit "We're A Winner" that Mayfield sang directly about Black pride. You just get on board.ĭETROW: He had been in The Impressions for years, and with songs like "People Get Ready," his work was beginning to get more political. By the mid-'60s, Curtis Mayfield was already a star.ĬURTIS MAYFIELD: (Singing) People get ready. ![]()
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