Isaac Hayes - The Spirit Of Memphis (1962-1976) (2017)

In the late 1960s Isaac Hayes helped save Stax Records. After its considerable success earlier in the decade, the Memphis record label hit hard times that almost destroyed its modest empire. In December 1967 Otis Redding the label’s biggest act and one of the most popular R&B singers in the world was killed in a plane crash alongside most of the Bar-Kays. In April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel, converting what had been a hideout and meeting place for the house musicians into a symbol of the nation’s escalating racial tensions. Meanwhile, Stax’s owners had been renegotiating the label’s contract with Atlantic Records, which had distributed nearly every Stax release; they were horrified to discover a clause that gave ownership of the entire back catalog, along with control of its second biggest act, Sam & Dave, to Atlantic. Stax had no funds and no way to get funds. One of the biggest success stories of the decade looked like it might meet an ignominious end—just another indie gobbled up by the New York giants strengthening their grasp on the market.

Instead, Al Bell Stax’s African-American president and co-owner concocted an ambitious plan. He would create “an instant catalog by releasing nearly 30 albums and singles simultaneously,” writes Robert Gordon in the liner notes to the electrifying Isaac Hayes box set The Spirit of Memphis (1962-1976). Among them were records by Booker T. & the MGs, Eddie Floyd, and Rufus Thomas as well as Hot Buttered Soul, the curious second solo album by Stax pianist, songwriter, arranger, producer, and now singer Isaac Hayes. He had come to the company as a keyboard player in Floyd Newman’s band, eventually teaming up with a local kid named David Porter to write some of the biggest soul hits of the decade, including “B-A-B-Y” for Carla Thomas and “Hold On I’m Coming” and “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” for Sam & Dave. He’d already recorded a solo album, Presenting Isaac Hayes, which had gone nowhere, but the label gave him full artistic control for a follow-up.

Hot Buttered Soul is an odd record, but at the time it must have sounded almost aggressively unmarketable: four songs spread over two sides, only one of which was credited to Hayes himself. Side one opens with a 12-minute psych-soul cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Walk On By,” and side two closes with an epic cover of Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” prefaced with several minutes of Hayes just talking. It sounded like nothing Stax had ever released, and under normal circumstances it might not have even been released. But Stax was desperate for product any product that might keep the company alive.

Hot Buttered Soul marked a turning point for Stax, for Hayes, and for American popular music. Selling more than one million copies, it dominated the pop, jazz, R&B, and easy listening charts for more than a year. It also established Hayes as one of the biggest artists of the era: an exemplar of black sophistication and masculinity, a figure who rejected the fashions of the decade as too staid but embraced the pop songs of the ’60s as the scaffolding for his R&B experiments. Hayes was an outsize figure: bald yet bearded, his muscular frame accentuated by tight pants and chainmail vests. When he accepted his Oscar for “Theme from Shaft,” he stood at the podium in a blue tuxedo with a fuzzy collar and oversize bowtie.

His musical and sartorial flamboyance has at times overshadowed his legacy in the decades following his heyday. To subsequent generations he is a punchline (“They say that Shaft is a bad motherf—” “Shut yo mouth!”) or perhaps a trendy sample source (particularly for 1990s trip-hop). Others may know him as Chef from “South Park” or simply as another name on a long list of celebrity Scientologists. Even more than the recent reissues of Hayes’ records, The Spirit of Memphis presents him as an endlessly complex and compelling artist, one who mixed genres freely and viewed soul music as a vehicle for mind-bogglingly ambitious gambits. Hayes spent the first years of his career learning the rules of pop songcraft, then spent the rest of his life exploding them.

TRACKLIST

01. Sassy 02:10
02. Can't See You When I Want To (Alternate Take)
03. How Do You Quit (Someone You Love)
04. Boot Leg
05. Cant Do Nothing Without You
06. I Had A Dream
07. I'll Run Your Heart Away
08. Fighting To Win
09. Never Like This Before
10. Patch My Heart
11. Little Bluebird
12. When Something Is Wrong With My Baby
13. Love Is After Me
14. I Thank You
15. The Sweeter He Is
16. Stormy
17. Can't See You When I Want To
18. Show Me How
19. The Big Dipper
20. Blue Groove
21. Precious, Precious
22. By The Time I Get To Phoenix
23. The Mistletoe And Me
24. Winter Snow
25. I Stand Accused
26. The Look Of Love
27. Never Can Say Goodbye
28. Theme From Shaft
29. Do Your Thing
30. Let's Stay Together
31. Ain't That Loving You (For More Reasons Than One)
32. Baby I'm A Want You
33. Theme From "The Men"
34. Rolling Down A Mountainside
35. Joy (Pt. 1)
36. Wonderful
37. Someone Made You For Me
38. Radio Spot: You Gotta Have It To Really Be In
39. Radio Spot: The Rapper Is Back
40. When I Fall In Love
41. Walk On By
42. I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
43. Man's Temptation
44. Never Gonna Give You Up
45. Windows Of The World
46. The Ten Commandments Of Love (Live)
47. Just Want To Make Love To You / Rock Me Baby (Live)
48. Stormy Monday (Live)
49. I Stand Accused (Live)
50. If Loving You Is Wrong (Live)
51. His Eye Is On The Sparrow (Live)
52. Ike's Mood I (Edit)
53. Youve Made Me So Very Happy
54. Black Militants Place
55. Aint No Sunshine
56. Hung Up On My Baby (Extended Jam)
57. Groove-A-Thon (Extended Jam)
58. Do Your Thing (Extended Jam)