At some point in 1968, Isaac Hayes decided to cover himself. Or at least cover a song he’d written, with David Porter, for Sam and Dave.
On his debut album Presenting Isaac Hayes1 he plays a jazzy instrumental cover version of You Don’t Know Like I Know that swings for a good eight and a half minutes. Clearly he enjoyed stretching a cover version to a great length, because this became part of his fabric for the next few years.
1969 saw him release Hot Buttered Soul. Everything about this record is incredible, from his cool, perfectly shaved head looking down on the cover, ostentatiously thick gold chain, to the songs within. His utterly wonderful version of Bacharach and David’s Walk on By is the gold standard of this song. As became his style, it slowly builds, the swirling organ and swooping strings2 giving way to bass, drums and guitar. After two minutes and ten seconds Isaac starts his slow, careful singing and the songs swells with magic. The backing vocals are sublime. It’s a masterpiece of a new style of epic, operatic soul.
12 minutes of Walk on By is trumped by 19 minutes of By The Time I Get To Phoenix. Hayes just talks at the start, the first of “Ike’s raps”. Jimmy Alexander’s bass pulses in the background, with Willie Hall’s metronomic cymbal ticking. Think of Isaac as seductively in power here, as he talks you through the story of songwriter Jimmy Webb, adding a good 16 minutes to the song made famous by Glen Campbell. Webb said, “I think that the appeal of the song lies in its sort of succinct tale -- its beginning, middle and end” but Isaac throws that idea away, taking full control of it, reinventing it so no-one could better it. It’s a staggering eight minutes 41 second before he starts to sing the opening line. He riffs around the lyrics so well, it becomes his song, interjecting lines like “But she was a non-believer!”
The coda is epic - and long - as we get a good six minutes of a repeated two note bass line as Isaac wails and preaches, the horns coming in to cry out in unison.
On his next album, The Isaac Hayes Movement, he took on Jerry Butler’s I Stand Accused, with another precise, ice cool start. Piano arpeggios picked out before a soulful guitar comes in to lullaby under Isaac’s story. His voice is magnificent when he begins to intone “I Stand Accused…” in the way he does, his breath slow and controlled. Funkadelic favourite Pat Lewis runs the vocal arrangements and the backing vocals are perfect here.
He comes close to bettering the magnificent Dusty Springfield with his epic version of I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself, a song which suits his half spoken style, jousting with the backing singers.
He finishes the album with nearly 12 minute of George Harrison’s Something. Such a perfect song, it’s been interpreted by hundreds of singers; Hayes version is as you’d expect: full of drama, pauses and icy piano. It also includes some wonderful violin work and a sharp wah-wah guitar. It’s arranged so he can conduct the band, bringing them in and shutting them up as necessary, deepening the soul of the song.
There was another attempt at Dusty on …To Be Continued, as he sings The Look of Love. Intricate and cool, it works so well, like an undiscovered Bond theme. There’s a pause just over three minutes in that’s delightful. Of course, he takes a song that was four minutes long when first released and stretches it to eleven. He does this through a slinky, funky coda. A sampler’s dream, Hayes orchestrates long instrumental passages of mellow soul, none much better than this, as the Bar-Kays begin to solo - the guitar of Micheal Toles sinuous and graceful. The solo is punctuated by snapping horns and slashes of strings, taking funky repetition to new heights. Things slow down at the end, keyboards, flutes and the tap of congas before Isaac comes back in to sings the middle eight again.
Ike’s Mood gives way to his mournful and powerful version of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. It makes perfect sense for this to be given the Hayes treatment. Even having done this so many times, it doesn't feel tired or cliched for Hayes to be giving us another long, epic, soulful version of a great hit, because he knows how to arrange them with tenderness, drama and beauty. Ike’s Mood is a superb instrumental, wordless voices a choral sound over stabbing guitar. The segue into the song is seamless, and this dramatic version does not disappoint.
His masterpiece album, Black Moses, from 1971 was released with a marvellous fold out cover, opening into a cross showing Hayes as a mystical Moses figure. I recently acquired this version from my dad’s collection3.
His version of Never Can Say Goodbye is restrained by his standards, coming in at only 5:07, but it doesn’t waste a second of its musicality, adding a lounge groove to the Jackson 5 song.
He had the smart idea of covering the Carpenters’ (They Long to Be) Close to You here, with proto-hip hop stuttering (but no actual scratching). For me4, this is the definitive version. It suits his voice perfectly, and the guitar lines are a delight. There’s a restrained but cool groove throughout.
I love his version of the less well known Going in Circles5. Hayes is in magnificent voice, and the music that swirls around is utterly magical, especially the little guitar lines. When he brings out his stunning falsetto I am floored.
There are other wonderful covers peppered through these early albums6 but from Joy [1973] onwards he wrote more and more of the tracks7. Many are still great, and perhaps he decided the epic covers had reached their conclusion, but he did them with such idiosyncrasy they cannot be forgotten.
I have the 1972 reissue, In the Beginning
“Swirling” and “swooping” may be cliches here, but by god this song swoops and swirls.
He let me have it. I didn’t steal it.
I am biased, I know.
It did make no. 15 in 1969, but it’s one of those tracks people don’t really know.
Not forgetting 17 minutes of Ain’t No Sunshine on his Live at the Sahara Tahoe.
The song, Joy, is absolutely brilliant. Don;t ignore this one.
On the 1975 UK & African only release, 'Use Me' LP, Hayes covers Eugene McDaniels' "Feel Like Making Love." Hayes transforms an already sexy tune into a hot, sweaty, sultry song of red-blooded passion. The track shows up later in 1978 on the US release titled "Hotbed."
Great post. I absolutely love Isaac Hayes. Hold on to that Black Moses record. Pure gold!