Walk On By!: Isaac Hayes' "Hot Buttered Soul"
What happens when a brilliant songwriter is totally let loose?
How's it going? Feels like it's been a while since the last article.
Hot Buttered Soul has the shortest first-listen-to-Jaffeelabs-article turnaround of anything I've featured here, I think. The first listen - sometime in the late afternoon of June 13th - had me totally captivated, absolutely eating out of the palm of this guy's hand like he was a Disney princess and I was a baby deer in a forest clearing. I knew I had to write about it. But what to write?
Well, I guess I'll start with the backstory. First issued in June 1969, almost exactly 55 years ago, the album is the result of Stax Records' break with the massive Atlantic label. The small Memphis soul label had good enough artists and songwriters to be a heavy hitter for its size, but it was overshadowed by Motown in terms of commercial R&B, and Atlantic had taken away its entire catalogue of recordings in the divorce. That meant no reissues or old hits. They needed a solution, and fast.
Al Bell, an executive who found himself in the role of vice president following some awkward restructuring, came upon an idea: have every artist signed to the label record new stuff. An "instant back-catalogue" totaling 27 albums and 30 singles was the result, and the best of the bunch was Hot Buttered Soul.
Hayes wasn't even going to record at first. He was more of a songwriter than a performer, and his debut album on Stax, Presenting Isaac Hayes, had been an absolute flop. He told Bell that he could only do this project with complete creative control - i.e. no meddling executives trying to make it more commercial. Bell, who seemingly felt bad for Hayes (he certainly did his fair share of meddling in the creation process of Presenting), agreed. The rest is history.
Before talking about the structure, let's talk about what this beast of an album sounds like. With a slightly greasy tone halfway between soul and funk, Hayes is backed by the funk band The Bar-Kays, who perform as a rock trio lineup. Once a seven-piece, four of them died in the same 1967 plane crash that killed Otis Redding. The Hammond organ, Hayes' primary instrument from a young age, features at almost every moment, adding its shining, heavenly tone to the production. There's also an overdubbed string section recorded at a different studio (who were famously given instructions to play before, not after, the beat, like the opposite of a delay/reverb effect) and occasional ethereal female backing vocals. Topping it off is Hayes' smooth, charismatic voice, which can go from a restrained murmur to a dramatic monologue to roaring passion in a minute.
The album itself only has four songs, but three of them clock in at over 9 minutes, with the longest (and best) at 18:42. A far cry from the 2-3 minute songs Motown was putting out at the time, Hayes used the LP format (as always, we have to remember it was only about 15 years old at the time, as new as the iPhone is now) to spread out and take his time with song structures. Long intros, outros, breakdowns, and solos abound, exploring slow, groovy territory that simply couldn't be touched upon with a 45rpm single.
A1: "Walk On By"
Originally a 3-minute single released by Dionne Warwick in 1963, "Walk On By" was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Just about the only thing Hayes kept was the lyrics. The album opens with intense strings playing a figure that's repeated somewhat later in the song by jazzy horns, then a swaying guitar solo from guest feature Harold Beane (later of Parliament-Funkadelic). The band takes a moment to stretch out before Hayes enters, pleading an ex-lover not to feel bad for him when she sees him on the street. His voice is silky and subtle over smooth layers of organ, drums, and elegant backing vocals, plus the occasional horn stab as it swells to a huge climax.
A normal R&B album from the era would open with an uptempo, exciting song, usually the hit single. (Shoutout to "Respect" off Aretha Franklin's legendary I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You (1967), which Hayes actually throws an oblique reference to in an ad-lib: "Sock it to me, mama…"). A stately slow-jam, much less 12 minutes of 75 BPM self-indulgent nonsense like this, was a rare and unique statement. The organ-guitar duet in the three-and-a-half-minute outro alone is worth the price of admission.
A2: "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquidalymistic"
The only original on the album, this song toys with increasingly bizarre sexual innuendos over a pulsing funk beat. Hayes says some insane shit during a vocal improvisation section, and the band keeps the groove happening for nine head-bopping minutes. The guitarist (this time, it's Bar-Kays rhythm section leader Michael Toles) slathers his tone in the wah-wah pedal, turning it into a pure funk song that closes out Side A with a lengthy jam with the bassist, drummer, and Hayes on organ. Also, the title is a Mary Poppins reference (I think??)
B1: "One Woman"
The only song on the album short enough to fit on a single, "One Woman" is a tad over five minutes and keeps to a more conventional soul sound-palette. This song is typical of Stax Records' usual output. Recording out of a retrofitted movie theater in Memphis, their iconic loose, light, yet rhythmic sound fits the song well. It plays out like a movie, too - opening with cinematic strings and shifting towards an emotionally complex and conflicted middle section, Hayes' character battles his need for his wife, who gives him emotional stability and comfort, with his desire for another woman, who's "making him do wrong." It concludes with a bit of uncertainty as to how the situation will pan out, and then…
B2: "By The Time I Get To Phoenix"
How do I explain "By The Time I Get To Phoenix?" Half of it is barely even a song - just a long, fiery monologue. Hayes, apparently bored of singing the same thing over and over on the live circuit, had started performing a "rap" before the song (note the use of the term in the 1960s, when what we think of as "rapping" started around 1973 and didn't leave New York until the '80s) - he told the musicians to hold the first chord of the song while he talked about the backstory and lead-up to the events depicted, where a young man drives away from the city where his disloyal girlfriend lives, perhaps to never return. Audiences went wild for it, so he figured he might as well try it out in the studio.
Nine whole minutes of the "rap" (I use quotes because it's more of a spoken-word piece - no rhymes, rhythm, or wordplay to speak of, although a lot of the phrasing he uses interestingly foresees modern rap, with ad-libs, cultural allusions, uncompromising depictions of awful situations…), all sitting on that one chord, with one drumstick hitting one cymbal, machine-like, on each beat. Hayes just keeps talking, going in a few different directions, then describing in detail the situation that's only implied by the original lyrics. Then the song actually starts.
That first chord change, just after he starts singing, is like the first taste of water after wandering in the desert for a week. It's enough to make a grown man cry. In that one moment, the tension the narrator has been building completely releases, and the real buildup starts.
The original song, just like "Walk On By," was a humble 3-minute soul single from 1965. But Hayes' interpretation turns the tempo down to glacial levels and adds long, intense ad-libbed sections, making the second half as long as the first - all of which builds up to the last three minutes, possibly some of the most intense available on record.
Common sense suggests an album structured like this would be too weird for mainstream audiences, but it was actually a big hit, getting to #1 on Billboard's R&B charts and later becoming RIAA certified gold with 500,000 sales. It shocked everyone that such a tiny independent label could go blow for blow with major labels like this, perhaps paving the way for the increasingly left-field R&B of the ‘70s, not to mention future alternative movements. Hayes later made a few more albums in the same pattern, such as To Be Continued (1970), which has a 9-minute take on "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."
I would chalk this unexpected success up to honesty - Hayes' control over the production process meant he could really pour his soul into the material, and that kind of serious creative vision can capture people's imagination. Despite the sometimes absurd proportions of the material, this is a very serious album, and seriousness is a quality that makes this kind of music really shine.