The Isaac Hayes soul classic `Hot Buttered Soul` is coming out soon on CD.
The new reissue will feature liner notes from Jim James or My Morning Jacket who says “Everything is revealed when you open your mind to itssecrets . . . [The album makes] your mind bleed . . . blurring the lines of what you thought you knew before was possible with music. It is one of those start to finish classics. And yes, damn near everything is here: Soul. Rock. Sweeping strings. Blasting horns. Full orchestral arrangements. Bare stripped down moments. Humor. Sadness. Funk . . . The recording is so God-damned 3D. It’s black. It’s white. It is universal. It is timeless. It is LOVE.”
‘Hot Buttered Soul’ is the Sgt Pepper of soul music. Before its release in 1969, soul music had been limited to singles and albums were collections of the singles. ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ was the first soul record made as a complete album.
“There was absolutely no attempt to be commercial,” Marvell Thomas, the album’s co-producer says. “It was just, ‘Let’s do these songs. Let’s do ’em like we like to do ’em. Play whatever you want to play and have a good time doing it.’ To the company, it wasn’t, ‘We’re going to make one of the all-time great albums and it’s going to sell huge.’ It was, ‘Okay, let Isaac do his thing.’”
The showcase of the album is the opening track, a cover of Jimmy Webb’s ‘By The Time I Get To Phoenix’ which was expaned to 18 and a half minutes of the album.
The Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic ‘Walk On By’ was also given the soul treatment on ‘Hot Buttered Soul’. “The guitar solo was not something that was planned on front end,” recalled Thomas. “It was like, ‘Well why not?’ We just stretched out and let it go. When you get in the middle of it, you just kind of ride with it until it stops.”
The CD issue of the album will contain the single mixes of ‘By The Time I Get To Phoenix’ and ‘Walk On By’ as the originals expanding the original album from 4 tracks to 6.
‘Hot Buttered Soul’ will be back on shelves on June 23.
