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People Get Ready (song)

"People Get Ready"
People Get Ready single.jpg
Single by The Impressions
from the album People Get Ready
Released 1965
Format 7" single
Recorded Chicago: 1964
Genre Soul
Length 2:38
Label ABC-Paramount
10622
Writer(s) Curtis Mayfield
Producer(s) Johnny Pate
The Impressions singles chronology
"Amen"
(1964)
"People Get Ready"
(1965)
"Woman's Got Soul"
(1965)

"People Get Ready" is a 1965 single by the Impressions, and the title track from the People Get Ready album. The single is the group's best-known hit, reaching number-three on the Billboard R&B Chart and number 14 on the Billboard Pop Chart. The gospel-influenced track was a Curtis Mayfield composition that displayed the growing sense of social and political awareness in his writing.

Rolling Stone magazine named "People Get Ready" the 24th greatest song of all time and also placed it at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The song was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. "People Get Ready" was named as one of the Top 10 Best Songs Of All Time by Mojo music magazine, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2016, the song was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its "cultural, historic, or artistic significance."

Various artists have covered the song, including Rod Stewart & Jeff Beck in 1985. The Australian group Human Nature had a minor hit in Australia with their version in 1997.

The gospel-influenced track was written and composed by Curtis Mayfield, who displayed the growing sense of social and political awareness in his writing. Mayfield said, "That was taken from my church or from the upbringing of messages from the church. Like there's no hiding place and get on board, and images of that sort. I must have been in a very deep mood of that type of religious inspiration when I wrote that song." The song is the first Impressions hit to feature Mayfield's guitar in the break. People Get Ready is in a long tradition of Black American freedom songs to use the train imagery - other examples are Wade in the Water, The Gospel Train, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The imagery comes from the Underground Railroad, not a real train but an escape route North to freedom for escaped slaves in America pre-civil war, with conductors such as Harriet Tubman going back time and again to the South to show people the route of the "railroad."


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