This week’s inspirational Music Monday song is “Keep on Pushing” by The Impressions

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, everyone!

On such a holiday as today, I think it may be wiser for me not to try and directly compare the struggle for employment in the 21st century with Dr. King’s struggle in the 1960s for economic and social justice (although economic hardships in the current recession continue to disproportionately affect minorities today). Instead, I tried to find a song that I felt the lyrics could apply to both situations.

“Keep on Pushing” was released in the Freedom Summer of 1964, in the midst of the civil rights movement, and urged perseverance, no matter the odds. In fact, it was originally a church gospel song that was slightly altered to better fit the message of the Chicago soul group - the original stanza “God gave me strength” was changed to “I’ve got my strength.” The Civil Rights Act was signed several weeks after its release.

In the liner notes to the People Get Ready! The Curtis Mayfield Story cd box set, producer David Nathan wrote of “Keep On Pushing”, “In the context of popular music, it was arguably the first such tune to urge African-Americans to move ahead, strive for social justice and equality, and refuse to accept the status quo.” Even though the Top Ten hit was the only ‘message’ song on their sophomore album of the same name, the musical contributions that original members Fred Cash, Sam Gooden, and Curtis Mayfield added to the social and political landscape led to the group later being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

Curtis Mayfield had strange ties to MLK. Not only is he the writer of this R&B anthem, but in 1990, he was paralyzed from the neck down in a freak accident from a lighting scaffold toppled by a “mini-tornado” gust of wind at an outdoor MLK tribute concert at Wingate Field in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. His life came to later personify such ‘triumph over adversity’ songs like his song “Keep on Pushing” because although he was unable to play guitar, barely able to sing, and diabetes took one of his legs, Curtis Mayfield took 6 years to release one last album, New World Order. He sang it one line at a time, lying flat on his back. It was the only way the great soul singer could get enough air into his lungs. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1999 for his solo work, but was unable to attend the ceremony and died 6 mos. later.

Before he died, Curtis once explained that his songs had evolved from the specific hopes of the civil rights movement to “the way we as all people deal with our lives.” For his last album, the struggle was constant, but he never stopped facing it. “Whenever life pulls you down,” he sang, “you just get back up and hold your ground.”

By Jeff Fryer, 405 Club Member, Music Connoisseur, Contributing Writer, & active job seeker

Read more of Jeff’s weekly Inspirational Music Monday posts here.