The History and Popular Music of the ’60s class learned about Isaac Hayes’ 1969 soul record. Here are their reactions.
Gibson McCoy:
Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was an American songwriter, singer, producer and actor. In 1969 he released Hot Buttered Soul on Stax Records, he was more than just an artist. He was both an in-house songwriter and session musician, as well as a record producer. Hot Buttered Soul is his second studio album.
The first song on the album is “Walk on By” originally written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and made popular by Dionne Warwick. The last track on Hot Buttered Soul is an almost 19-minute long version of Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” The first nine minutes are Hayes talking to the audience about his perception of the song. Hayes played Hammond organ and sang the vocals live while also conducting the tracking band all at once. The album was released in June 1969 and packed at #1 on the Top R&B chart and #8 on the Billboard 200.
Lily Brooks:
I loved the videos and pictures of Isaac Hayes performing and wearing his big gold body chains and I think it’s a unique part of his stage identity. I think that matches with the album because he just radiates confidence and swagger through his music and style. I went off of a photo of him wearing a body gold chain with a piece of fabric on his right shoulder. I chose that photo because he looked pretty cool with his sunglasses looking up.
Conor McGeady:
Hot Buttered Soul is a record undefined by any main genre of music. It contains elements of a vast amount of types of music, such as soul, jazz, pop, rock and even some psychedelic as well. With this “undefined” style of music, there’s a lot of interesting musical elements and instrumentation that you might not get in any other specific genre. For example, prior to listening to this album, I never really thought about what a fusion between jazz and rock could sound like, and to my surprise it sounds pretty damn good, at least done by a musician like this. This record was something that I hadn’t really experienced before, and even though not all the tracks were amazing, in my opinion, listening to something new and fresh is always a good time.
With a lot of the music we’ve listened to in this class, a good amount of the pop stuff has a very distinct and similar sound among most artists, such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, as well as the girl groups like the Supremes and the Shangri-Las. Their sound consists of consistent, energetic drums with strumming guitars and catchy, relatively simple melodies for vocals, sometimes with strings or horns. With this record, I was almost always surprised by what I was hearing, whether it was something that sounded weird, off or great.
While there were only four tracks, I found all of them to have pros and cons. “Walk on By” and the second track (can’t be bothered to type out the name) are my favorites of the four. I usually don’t like super long songs, but “Walk on By” somehow managed to keep me interested the whole time, with the dynamic changes in intensity, rhythm and tone. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” however, didn’t keep my attention as well. While it picked up at the end, and was definitely enjoyable then, I thought the first 13-ish minutes of the song were not very engaging at all. “One Woman” I feel pretty indifferent about. It wasn’t amazing or bad, just good. It was more on the jazzy side of things, which was a nice change of pace from the funk-rock focused second track.
Alex Skiles:
The most powerful song on here for me was “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Watching a live video of it in class made me appreciate it more. I wanted to capture the character’s lonely and uncertain feelings as he drives away from his home and wife at 3 AM.
Pritam Khalsa:
The most fascinating song on Hot Buttered Soul is “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” It’s a cover of the song by Jimmy Webb, however, Hayes added an explanation of what he thinks the story is about. He gives a long background before singing the song which I think is very interesting. It makes the song significantly longer, however, I think it’s worth listening to. I decided to rewrite the song from the woman’s perspective, but I wanted her to try and go find her boyfriend who left her at the end. I also changed all of the places he mentions to other places somewhat near them because she knows him well enough to know what direction he is going in but not well enough to know the actual places. This––and a lack of cellphones––might be some of the reasons why he has to assume she called but doesn’t actually get her call.
By the time that I am waking up
He’ll be somewhere off near Flagstaff
Yes I found his note hangin’ on my door
I laugh ‘cause this couldn’t be happening
He said wouldn’t do this to me anymore
By the time I get to work
He’ll be somewhere off near Denver
When I’m off at lunch I’ll give him a call
I hear the phone keep on ringin’
Maybe it won’t be stopping at all
By the time I am off to sleep
He’ll be somewhere off near Kansas
I start to cry no I didn’t think I’d miss him at all
But I didn’t know he would really truly go
He tried to tell me but oh I really didn’t know
By the time he gets to Memphis
I’ll be somewhere off near Texas
I can’t keep chasing this boy no more
I have to go and find him
Just before he gets too far away from me oh no
Sam Swartley:
I sampled “Walk on By” to create a hip hop beat. I highlighted the two different vibes of the tune. Along with adding some melodic lines on a rhodes and a strong bass line, and of course making some killer drums. With the guitar sample I had the sample twice in two different octaves which gave a cool effect.
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