The roots of the sorrow that underpin this album can probably be traced back to Isaac Hayes’s turbulent start in life. After his mother died when he was an infant, his father disappeared, leaving him in the care of his grandparents in a shack in Covington, Tennessee.
The family moved to Memphis when Hayes was six. A command of the Hammond organ, saxophone and flute as well as an intense schooling in the gospel academies of North Memphis got him an apprenticeship at the city's Stax recording studios. There he excelled as a songwriting partner to David Porter, an alliance that yielded several hits for Sam & Dave in the mid 1960s including Soul Man.
His reward was a recording contract with Stax but his debut LP was a commercial flop. After the tragedy of losing Otis Redding to a plane crash in 1967, Stax lost its distribution deal with Atlantic and the new owner Al Bell had to rebuild the entire catalog from scratch. Hayes sensed an opportunity and took the unprecedented step of demanding full creative control of his second LP. The tempest of skyscraping strings and horns that herald the opening version of Bacharach & David's Walk On By signaled the arrival of a new dawn in soul music production.
Hot Buttered Soul is divided into four parts, three of which clock in north of 10 minutes. Every step is diligently choreographed and orchestrated.
Hayes’s comfort with his surroundings gives him licence to dig deeper and reach higher than any soul singer had previously dared. A soulful anguish is unleashed in the sweetest fashion possible. The rawest of feelings morph into the most redemptive of sounds.
