Hot Buttered Soul
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| Hot Buttered Soul | ||
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| Studio album by Isaac Hayes | ||
| Released | 1969 | |
| Recorded | Summer 1969 | |
| Genre | R&B | |
| Length | 45:24 | |
| Label | Stax | |
| Producer(s) | Al Bell, Allen Jones, Marvell Thomas | |
| Professional reviews | ||
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| Isaac Hayes chronology | ||
| Presenting Isaac Hayes (1967) |
Hot Buttered Soul (1969) |
Enterprise (1970) |
Hot Buttered Soul was Isaac Hayes' second studio album. Released in 1969, it is recognized as a landmark in soul music.
Hot Buttered Soul broke radically away from the standard three-minute song format, and instead consisted of just four tracks—two pop song covers and two originals—with lengths ranging from 5 to 18 minutes.
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[edit] Album history
The album almost never came to be. Hayes' solo debut, Presenting Isaac Hayes, had been a poor seller for Stax Records, and Hayes was about to return to his behind-the-scenes role as a producer and songwriter at the venerable soul label when it suddenly lost its complete back catalog after splitting with Atlantic Records in May of 1968. Stax executive Al Bell decided to release a new, almost instant, back catalog of 27 albums and 30 singles at once, ordered all of Stax's artists to record new material, and encouraged some of Stax's prominent creative staff, including Hayes and Steve Cropper, to record solo albums.
Burned by the retail flop of Presenting Issac Hayes, Hayes told Bell that he would not cut a follow-up unless he was granted complete creative control. Since Bell had encouraged Hayes to record Presenting... in the first place, he readily agreed.
Hayes demonstrated his great skill as an arranger with these slow-burning epics, starting with a cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic, "Walk on By." Second was "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic", an uptempo slice of funk with wah-wah guitar and rolling pianos. "One Woman", at just over five minutes the shortest track on the album, is a stately and beautiful track about the pangs of infidelity. An epic reinterpretation of Jimmy Webb's country music gem, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", closes the album: After an eight-minute spoken introduction, the song slowly builds to a stunning climax of horns, strings, organs and vocals.
The album was notable for its use of innovative production techniques, and has deeply influenced a great deal of subsequent soul, hip hop and Motown music. Both "Walk on By" and "Hyperbolicsyllabicseequedalymystic" have been sampled extensively, the former showing up on tracks by the likes of 3rd Bass and Wu-Tang Clan, while the latter song was sampled by Public Enemy for "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos".
[edit] Track listing
- "Walk on By" (Bacharach, David) – 12:03
- "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" (Hayes, Isbell) – 9:38
- "One Woman" (Chalmers, Rhodes) – 5:10
- "By The Time I Get to Phoenix" (Webb) – 18:42
[edit] Personnel
- Issac Hayes - vocals, keyboards
- The Bar-Kays - Rhythm Section
- Al Bell - Producer, Supervising Producer
- Bill Dahl - Liner Notes
- Kate Hoddinott - Package Redesign
- Allen Jones - Producer
- Terry Manning - Engineer
- Bob Smith - Photography
- Joe Tarantion - Mastering
- Russ Terrana - Remixing
- Marvell Thomas - Producer
- Honeya Thompson - Art Direction
- Christopher Whorf - Cover Design
- Ed Wolfrum - Engineer, Mixing
[edit] Miscellanea
- American punk icon Henry Rollins has frequently referred to Hot Buttered Soul as being one of his all time favorite albums; Rollins would later interview Hayes for his book Do I Come Here Often? (ISBN 1-880985-61-6).
