People Get Ready by The Impressions

People Get Ready, the Impressions' 1965 album on ABC-Paramount, catches the Chicago trio of Curtis Mayfield, Sam Gooden and Fred Cash at full strength, with Johnny Pate producing. By then the group had shed Jerry Butler and the Brooks brothers and turned itself into a soul act with gospel in its bones.

Mayfield's title song is the reason this record matters. It's a hymn in everything but name, gentle and unhurried, the three voices weaving around one another, and it gave the civil rights movement one of its anthems. The Grammy Hall of Fame took it in in 1998. The album did the business too, topping the R&B albums chart and reaching number 23 on the Billboard 200.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.