Percy Mayfield

Today on Ecléctico you're listening to Percy Mayfield, a rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. A popular performer best known for slow blues ballads in the 1950s, he also wrote classic songs like "Hit the Road, Jack"—a major hit for Ray Charles.

You'll go deeper with an excerpt from and a link to an article by Chad Depasquale on Aquarium Drunkard.

"My Error" by Percy Mayfield
1970 | Rhythm and blues singer and songwriter from Louisiana

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Go deeper.
So here [Percy Mayfield] is with “My Error,” ostensibly a fairly straightforward ‘unsurprisingly got fooled around on but feeling down about it nonetheless’ blues. Yet the swirling organ, undulating vibraphone, and softly blowing saxophone sorrow of Mayfield’s backing band—dreamily spectral underneath his weary, half-mumbled woes—transforms the tune into something more mystifying and sinister. Mayfield—a writer first and foremost—plays a trick on the listener during the third act, transforming our lovesick narrator’s relentless self-pity into a dark, spiteful resignation.

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