Tragically Hipster * Los Angeles: MUXTAPE MONDAYS: ISAAC HAYES

Monday, August 11, 2008

MUXTAPE MONDAYS: ISAAC HAYES

(Every Monday at Tragically Hipster we'll feature a look at a band, performance, or vague musical concept, with an accompanying virtual mixtape for your listening pleasure. Muxtapes will be kept online only until the next week's column is up, so listen while you can. There's no need to thank us; it's just one more service we like to provide for you, our dedicated readers. Most of whom also write for the site.)

Well, fuck.

I had originally planned for this inaugural edition of Tragically Hipster's Muxtape Mondays series to focus on the recent Deluxe Edition reissues of U2's first three albums -- what I like to call their "Christian Warrior" trilogy -- but it seems that circumstances have conspired against me.

Yesterday, Isaac Hayes died.

Most of us will probably peg Hayes as the voice of Chef on South Park, the lovably crass and perpetually horny school cook. He's also famed for doing the theme to Shaft, which has been lampooned in dozens of films and television skits, and which Hayes himself later extensively reworked into the theme song for Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (retitled "Two Cool Guys").

But while his pop-culture image was one wherein his tongue remained planted firmly in cheek, Isaac Hayes was also an extraordinary songwriter and performer, one of the individuals crucial in defining the Stax soul sound of the late 60's and early 70's.

Along with his writing partner David Porter, Hayes was the main creative force behind the duo Sam & Dave, penning the majority of their singles. During his later solo career, Hayes became one of the first soul artists to focus on designing albums as full artistic statements, rather than using them as piecemeal collections for previously-released singles. His soundtracks to such blaxploitation flicks as Shaft and Truck Turner were classics of the genre, and pieces of the latter score were later reused by Quentin Tarantino in Jackie Brown and Kill Bill.

He was also crowned an honorary King of Ghana in 1992 in recognition of his humanitarian work, if that's the kind of thing that impresses you.

Hayes' songs are full of melodramatic melancholy, romantic euphoria, and unsuppressed longing. Our mixtape highlights a handful of his best solo work, a smattering of Sam & Dave tunes, and even features a tiny taste of Chef's chocolate salty balls:

On the Muxtape:

1. "Theme from Shaft"

2. "Soul Man" (Sam & Dave)

3. "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic"

4. "Do Your Thing (Single Mix)"

5. "(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right"

6. "No Substitute" (as Chef)

7. "Hold On, I'm Comin'" (Sam & Dave)

8. "Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)" (as Chef)

9. "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" (Public Enemy)

10. "I Thank You" (Sam & Dave)

11. "Never Can Say Goodbye"

12. "Walk on By"

Quick Notes on Select Songs:

*With the theme to the movie Shaft, Hayes introduced the wom-chicha-wom guitar strut that came to define, for better or worse, much of popular music in the 1970's. He won an Oscar for the song, and a Grammy for the subsequent soundtrack album.

*The seemingly innocuous "Soul Man" is actually a sly reference to the 12th Street Riot in Detroit, where residents had spray painted the word "soul" on the black-owned businesses that survived the destruction. It became the best-selling single to date for the Stax label, and cemented Hayes and Porter's reputation as a major songwriting team.

*With his 1969 solo album, Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes bucked convention by making a full-length album consisting of only four songs, three of which were ten minutes or longer, and one of which ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix") ran to a full eighteen. "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" was the only original composition on the record, written with Stax Vice President Al Bell, a strong proponent of Hayes' desire to become a solo artist.

*Isaac Hayes claims that "Hold On, I'm Comin'" was written in ten minutes, and banned for its titular double-entendre almost as quickly. Stax had to slightly change the title to suit the whims of the local radio stations, and the newly rechristened "Hold On, I'm A-Coming" (a title which is less suggestive exactly how?), propelled Sam & Dave to the top of the R&B charts.

*Both "No Substitute" and "Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)" were initially featured in South Park, and were later recorded and released on the Chef Aid tie-in album. Though it was widely reported that Hayes parted ways with the South Park creative team after an episode which lampooned Scientology -- a faith of which Hayes is an adherent -- it was later revealed that Hayes' actual reason for departure was due to a stroke which left him incapable of adequately performing his lines. Though a "press release" was widely distributed in which he appeared to have denounced the show and its creators, it remains unclear precisely who wrote it, as Hayes had stated repeatedly in interviews that he was okay with the content of the episode in question.

*In 1988, when most artists were furiously trying to stop hip-hop bands from sampling their records without paying heavy licensing fees, Hayes actively solicited Public Enemy to borrow from his back catalogue. The resultant Public Enemy tune, "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" became a classic of the genre. Based around a sample from "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic," it tells the story of an African American conscientious objector who is sent to prison for refusing to join the military, and who then organizes an unlikely prison riot and spectacular, bazooka-aided escape. It's every bit as awesome as it sounds.

*I don't know that I'd ever be able to whittle down my music collection to a single all-time favorite song, but I know for damn sure that if I were to attempt it, the Isaac Hayes version of "Walk on By" would be a serious contender for the short list. A cover of the Burt Bacharach tune originally recorded by Dionne Warwick, Hayes takes a little nothing of a pop-ditty and suffuses it with an aching melancholy, transforming it into the pained cry of a once-proud man trying desperately to hold on to the tattered remains of his dignity. The whole songs seems designed to prop up the crushed singer: the backing chorus gently, empathetically keeping the vocals perfectly on-rhythm, even as Hayes croons and moans outside the lines; the orchestra building and ebbing and building again, a reminder of the depth of his barely-contained grief; all of this overlaid with the pleading wail of his guitar, an aural portrait of tears, inescapable in its solitude. "Walk on By" moves me in ways I can't fully describe in words, and for that much alone I am grateful to Isaac Hayes.