Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul

Released - September 1969

Genre - Soul

Producer - Al Bell; Marvell Thomas & Allen Jones

Selected Personnel - Isaac Hayes (Vocals/Keyboards); Marvell Thomas (Keyboards); Willie Hall (Drums); James Alexander (Bass); Michael Toles (Guitar); Johnny Allen (String & Horn Arrangements)

Standout Track - Walk On By

You're right, the supposed chronology of this blog is jumping all over the place at the moment. Ostensibly, we're just about into 1974 now, guys, but forgive me for another quick jump backwards. More fool me for only just getting really into a musical scene that had its heyday in the late 60s and early 70s only after I'm supposed to have finished writing about them. Still, here we are in 1969 with an album that helped to translate soul music into something far more ambitious and, dare I say it for fear of creating confusion with a whole separate thing I've already talked about endlessly on this blog, progressive than it had been allowed to be over the previous two decades or so. As I mentioned partially in my review of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, through the 1960s soul musicians like Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin had helped the soul music hit-making factories of Stax, Atlantic and Motown into huge global empires, but the genre had largely been limited to simple, three-minute love songs, just as pop and rock music had up until the mid-60s when people started getting a little more inventive with the form. At Stax Records, one of the most prominent behind-the-scenes creative figures had been Isaac Hayes who, alongside his songwriting partner David Porter, had written some of the label's biggest hits for other artists. In 1967, Stax executive Al Bell encouraged Hayes to try and launch himself as a solo artist and the result was Presenting Isaac Hayes, an album that failed to ignite any critical or commercial success and has therefore largely been forgotten.

Soul music would therefore have been deprived of one of its greatest talents had Stax not run into big trouble in 1968 - their biggest selling artist and standard-bearer, Otis Redding, died in a plane crash, meaning they were suddenly desperately in need of innovative and charismatic new solo artists to fill the void he left behind. Around the same time, Stax split with their partner label Atlantic Records and lost the vast majority of their entire back catalogue of recordings to them, meaning Bell initiated an imperative for a huge number of new albums to be recorded in order to provide the label with enough material to put out. Hayes was reluctant to try and record another solo record, having been poised to resume his position as a behind-the-scenes creative svengali figure, but eventually agreed when Bell promised him he would be granted full creative control this time. Quite what "full creative control" means in this context isn't quite clear, as Hayes isn't granted a producer credit on the album (though Bell is), and actually only wrote one of the album's four songs himself.

But presumably Hayes was granted complete authority over what form those songs would take, and how the sessions would be orchestrated, and it's fair to say that under his guiding hand they're transformed radically into something that soul music hadn't really seen before. I mentioned on What's Going On that Marvin Gaye in 1971 was perhaps the first person to use soul music as an effective medium to express socio-political concerns rather than just to sing about love or sex, and while thematically on Hot Buttered Soul Hayes still sticks close to the romantic formula, he's certainly perhaps the first popular artist to use soul music as an effective medium for genuinely ambitious musical ideas. The three-minute Burt Bacharach and Hal David number "Walk On By," originally a hit for Dionne Warwick, is utterly transformed into a monstrous behemoth of a slow groove jam, driven by pulsating organ and sinewy, fuzzy guitar lines, with gospel-esque backing vocals chorusing Hayes' vocal part back to him. The mood is one of raunchy, effortless cool, with the tight grooves anchored by the Stax house band the Bar-Kays - that opening fanfare of a theme, with the razor-edged guitars over the declamatory organ, really grabs you by the throat and won't let you go for the song's entire running length. Unlike Hayes' next project, the iconic Shaft soundtrack on which the rhythm section would largely take a back seat to the string and horn arrangements, here the odd horn flourish serves as a way of ornamenting or punching out a particular moment, but essentially things are kept simple as Hayes' keyboards interplay with the Bar-Kays irresistible grooves.

"Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" seems to be one of the best-loved tracks on the album, and is the only one to be an original composition by Hayes, but for me it's actually a little less compelling than the mighty opening track. It's a much simpler, less complicated funk jam and only really picks up with Hayes' rolling, jazzy piano solo in the second half. It's a cool song and has enough going on to recommend it, but is just perhaps a little overlong to strike me as a real classic. "One Woman" is perhaps the only moment on the record where Hayes bows to tradition and just allows himself to record a simple, unadorned piano ballad. It's a pretty song and, while it lacks the bombastic epicness of "Walk On By," it also at least knows that a little restraint can go a long way and doesn't feel the need to overembellish its lovely tune and end up outstaying its welcome as the album's two other songs do.

The final and longest track, an 18-minute cover of Jimmy Webb's "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," doesn't so much extend its welcome as not even make itself welcome for the first nine minutes, at which point it becomes brilliant. Essentially, Hayes decides to kick things off with an extended spoken word vocal part over a sustained organ note, which sort of starts out interesting but quickly gets far too self-indulgent for its own good as Hayes spends a good few minutes basically saying "I'm about to sing "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" by Jimmy Webb, who is a great songwriter," then another few minutes saying "Here is an account in my own words of what I think the narrator of the song had been through prior to the line that actually starts the song." Eventually, the song finally begins and, just as Hayes promised, it's excellent - a slow, moody ballad redolent with heartbreak and longing as it tells the story of a man who's finally had enough of his lover and sets off to start afresh but can't shake thoughts of her. It builds to a magnificent climax of swirling strings and brash horns as Johnny Allen's orchestral arrangements finally find an opportunity to steal the show from the Bar-Kays' playing.

Of the wealth of new material Stax put out in 1969 to combat their major upheaval, Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul was by far the most exciting, promising as it did an exciting new future for soul music where it was able to do so much more and be so much more ambitious than in the radio-friendly pop song formula it had followed for so long. Hayes was established as a new leader in soul music and would soon be able to really capitalise on that reputation on a grand scale via his work on Shaft. It's an imperfect album and, for all that its ambition and grandiose sense of scale is to be commended, it's only on "Walk On By" that a decision to extend a song to a mammoth jam feels 100% justified rather than ever so slightly over-indulgent, but there's not a song here that's totally not worth any respect or attention either, every single one ultimately achieves a substantial amount of greatness in its own way even if it takes a while to get there, or eventually wears it out. Certainly, for me it's been another strong indicator that the history of soul music is a far more exciting and diverse and surprising thing to delve into than all the Motown Greatest Hits compilations might lead you to believe. For many years I've assumed that it's largely populated by little more than those aforementioned three minute love songs, and now I feel like I'm at the beginning of a whole new voyage into new territory, which is an exciting thing to feel. For that alone, whether it's overlong or not, Hot Buttered Soul feels like an album worthy of recommending highly.

Track Listing:

1. Walk On By (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)

2. Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic (Isaac Hayes & Al Bell)

3. One Woman (Charles Chalmers & Sandra Rhodes)

4. By The Time I Get To Phoenix (Jimmy Webb)