On August 14, 1990, tuning his guitar, he walked out on to an open- air stage in Brooklyn to play for about 10,000 people. A freak, 40mph gust of wind eased loose a speaker stack and lighting rig, toppling them down on him ("Show boss senator Marty Marowitz said: 'We rushed over. Curtis looked pretty bad...'" wrote the Daily Mirror); the damage to his spine left him a quadriplegic.And that, as you might expect, was really pretty much that until, a few months ago, a new Curtis Mayfield LP was announced. New World Order, released on 3 February, is a powerful mix, taking in sly, streetwise hustle, sexy love songs and redemptive consciousness-raising, an uplifting thing reminiscent of the man at his best. How? He can no longer play guitar, two years ago he was still unable to sing ("I don't have a diaphragm any more.. so when I sit up, I lose my voice"). He relies on his wife and kids to feed him and move his limbs. What he does have is a towering spiritual strength, which, together with contributing friends like Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin, computer technology and the determination to record each song line by line, lying on his back, has proved Mayfield, when the chips are down, to be an inspiration of a wild kind, someone who lives by the creed he preaches.It was his grandmother, the Reverend Annabelle Mayfield, who first got Curtis singing with her Travelling Soul Spiritualist Church "If anybody wanted to join up and sing, they could sing.

However, we found we had a little bit of talent, so we formed this group called the Northern Jubilees. That's where I got my start."He didn't so much find a guitar as have one find him. It belonged to the bass singer of the Northern Jubilees, Curtis's cousin Buddy "Or Patty Foot. Well, you know, when we all sang back then, there was no instruments and of course we would sing a cappella.

Everybody would pat their foot and clap their hands and slap their thigh just to get the rhythm going That's how most quartets would sing Patty Foot - well, he was a very tall black man. I think his feet were heard the strongest..."But Buddy joined the army when he got around 18, and when he came back, he brought a guitar. Only I never saw him play it, nobody ever played it, it just sat in the kitchen corner. But, being that I was capable of using and picking up any instrument - I played piano whenever I saw one - well, I took it up and found myself retuning it to the key of F sharp, for the black keys on the piano."That F sharp open tuning was something Mayfield only found to be unusual when The Impressions first appeared at the Harlem Apollo and he tried playing with the house orchestra, but he used it throughout his career. The man and the instrument were melded; he must miss playing it?"Oh, very much so.

I mean, I guess my guitar was for me what Lucille was for BB King. We were just inseparable, and it was almost like another person. Your guitar never lets you down." Enthusiasm, gives way to regret "And the way it was... it's just a lost tuning, a lost art that no one will probably pick up again, you know?"Mayfield's output was prolific. He wrote from his own and others' experiences - "with every feeling, every conversation, there was a song" - and read widely.

Before long, the boy from the ghetto had sculpted "Isle of Sirens", setting bits of Homer amid a walking blues It was some imagination "Oh, but I still have my dreams. And I come up with ideas - sometimes even in my sleep, I'll dream a song. However, it's a little tougher now trying to get it on to paper and all the way to music itself."The day one life stopped and another started still isn't entirely clear to Mayfield, though he'll reason through it. "I was to close the show, but it was running a little late, so I sent my band out and they hit the opening number - "Superfly".