Hot Buttered Soul
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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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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 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 Isaac 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.
The album begins with a cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic, "Walk on By." Second was "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic", an uptempo funk song with wah-wah guitar and rolling pianos. "One Woman", at just over five minutes the shortest track on the album, focuses on the pangs of infidelity. An extended reinterpretation of Jimmy Webb's country music composition "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" closes the album. After an eight-minute spoken introduction, the song slowly builds to a climax of horns, strings, organs and vocals.
The album was notable for its use of innovative Bell/Hayes production and Terry Manning engineering techniques, and has deeply influenced a great deal of subsequent soul, hip hop and Motown music. Both "Walk on By" and "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" have been sampled extensively, the former showing up on tracks by the likes of Compton's Most Wanted, 3rd Bass and Wu-Tang Clan, while the latter song was sampled by Public Enemy for "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos". "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" also appears on the soundtrack to the film Zodiac.
Much of the final production was done as part of the package of products brought to Detroit by producer Don Davis to expedite the production process. The project strings and horns were recorded at United Sound Studios by engineer Ed Wolfrum with vocals and final mix at Terra-Shirma by engineer Russ Terrana. The pre-delay technique, used at Artie Fields productions in Detroit in late 1950s and at Columbia Records, was used by Wolfrum and others for numerous productions and commercials previous and after the release of this project including the Marvin Gaye "What's going on" project, with orchestration also recorded at United. Russ Terrana went on to the engineering staff of Motown Records and was responsible recording and mixing of many hits on that label.
Audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab reissued Hot Buttered Soul in SACD format in 2003.
Track listing
Side one
- "Walk on By" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – 12:03
- "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" (Isaac Hayes, Alvertis Isbell) – 9:38
Side two
- "One Woman" (Charles Chalmers/Sandra Rhodes) – 5:10
- "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (Jimmy Webb) – 18:42
Personnel
- Isaac 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 Tarantino - Mastering
- Russ Terrana - Remixing
- Marvell Thomas - Producer
- Honeya Thompson - Art Direction
- Christopher Whorf - Cover Design
- Ed Wolfrum - Engineer, Mixing
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).
- Engineer Terry Manning was an early pioneer of the delayed reverberation technique on this album.
Later Samples
- "Walk on By"
- "Me Against the World" by 2Pac from the album Me Against The World
- "Dead Bent" by MF DOOM from the album Operation: Doomsday
- "I Can't Go To Sleep" by Wu Tang Clan from the album The W
- "2 Wicky" by Hooverphonic from the album "A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular"
