373. Isaac Hayes, "Hot Buttered Soul"

 


What a wild album.  There were only four songs on the original version, one of them 12 minutes long and one of them 18 minutes long, and Hayes only helped write one of them.  So this weird collection, released into the teeth of the 2-minute single era, sold a million fucking copies.  

First we've got to talk about "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," that sappy lump that a million shitty lounge singers have tried to emote into.  Well, Hayes said fuck that and took that song and gave it an eight-minute spoken word intro, backed with only a one-note bass thump and cymbal tap, in which he spins out a story about a woman who did him wrong -seven times!!!!- before he decided to leave her in a '65 Ford and head from LA towards, yes, Phoenix.  In a completely different vein, there's the lyrically loony "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic," which finds him singing lyrics like

I wanna come back
Cause I like it like that
Your modus operandi
Is really all right, out of sight
Your sweet phalanges
Know how to squeeze
My gastronomical stupensity
Is really satisfied when you're loving me

Is it about sex or heroin addiction?  I don't know, but it's gotta be the first use of "gastronomical stupensity" in a song.

We can talk about the songs and what they mean all day, but my takeaway was how impressive Hayes' voice is.  It has a low, broad, rich tone, like an oboe maybe, that cracks sometimes but the cracks are the good kind.  I don't know how the vocals were recorded but it sounds like he is standing right next to you.  I could listen to that voice all day.

Isaac Hayes is probably best known to you kids today from his role as Chef on "South Park," a show he left under unpleasant circumstances after they continued to make fun of Scientology, which Hayes had embraced.  It's a shame, because a whole generation knows him for that instead of this album or "Shaft" or his incredible Cadillac.


Hayes, sadly, died in 2008, shortly before his 66th birthday.

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