Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul

Being a relative newcomer to the world of music outside late-night Rage broadcasts and saturday morning pop playlists, my first, unknowing, exposure to the music of Isaac Hayes was probably either the Shaft remake or the heavily-sampling I Can't Go To Sleep from the criminally underrated W. Both songs caught me upon first listen. Shaft's Theme encompasses everything I know of Black music in the 70's, literally miles away from what I was hearing at the time. (Korn? Limp Bizkit? How embarrassment.) RZA didn't need to do anything to the epic Walk On By, he simply looped a minute of the now-iconic guitar line and overpowering strings while he and Ghostface dropped some of their most emotive verses. It was inevitable, then, that I'd eventually find my way to Hayes' own music and after one particularly fortuitous trip to Ten Seconds Down in 2004, I had a second hand copy of Hot Buttered Soul in my discman.

Spanning only four tracks - two covers and two originals - Hot Buttered Soul is in stark contrast to the pop sensibilities of Stax Records. Walk On By is a cover of the Burt Bacharach penned Dionne Warwick tune stretched out to 12 minutes that seem over before they even begin. By The Time I Get To Phoenix is stunning, 20 minutes of spoken word and expressive, big band trumpets that emphasize the sadness of the Jimmy Webb composition. The songs that fill out the album, the (much) shorter One Woman and Hyperbolicsyllablecsesquedalymistic don't quite reach these highs but are excellent songs in their own right. The latter, especially, has fueled more than a handful of classic Hip-Hop songs with an endlessly sampled piano melody.

Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes' first solo commercial success, indirectly heralded the increasing creative control of artists over their own works. Stevie Wonder's 'classic' period followed in the early 70's along with Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield's most recognisable and accomplished works. The song lengths and slowly building melodies, more closely associated with psychedelic rock, was an indication of the then-future of black soul music. If Isaac Hayes accomplished nothing else in his life (and let's not forget Shaft or Chef), Hot Buttered Soul would have been enough to secure his legacy in music.