It seems worth exploring Presenting Isaac Hayes, his album debut, in the light of Hayes’ recent sudden passing.

Presenting Isaac Hayes was no traditional recording session. It was essentially an after-hours jam, Hayes running through some tunes on acoustic piano in early 1968 with bassist Duck Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, Jr., while Stax exec Al Bell, no recording engineer, manned and rolled the recording tape. The audio quality from Bell’s attempt at recording proved so haphazard that he took the tapes to New York, where Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd and producer Arif Mardin cleaned them up. Steve Cropper edited the music into separate tunes and medleys. Dunn, Jackson and Bell are listed as producers; Mardin is credited as mixer and Cropper as editor.

This jam session casualness is this music’s blessing and curse. Since it was impromptu and unrehearsed, Hayes relies on blues standards with which all three were already familiar, which means that you might be familiar with them, too. But even if Presenting sounds unorganized and casual (because it was), Hayes’ playing in an acoustic piano trio is a great opportunity to hear him stand out more, by himself, without all the strings and rhythm machines and female vocalists and complicated arrangements that characterize his later, trademark work. He’s just jammin’ on some blues.

Or to quote Hayes from Rob Bowman’s notes to the ‘95 CD release: “I was drunk when I did that album. Me and Duck sneaked off to the bathroom and hoarded two bottles of champagne ’cause it was somebody’s birthday.”

Hayes’ piano playing on Presenting sounds like jazz-blues pianists Ramsey Lewis, Charles Brown and even Les McCann, sometimes in turn and sometimes all together: Like Brown in “When I Fall in Love” and “Misty,” cocktail blues that sort of explain why Hayes would later be so interested in producing Billy Eckstine for his Enterprise label; like Lewis when he first wades into the water of “Precious, Precious”; and like McCann in the lusty funk later in “Precious, Precious” and “Rock Me Baby.”

“I Just Want to Make Love to You” nicely comes together deep in the pocket then segues into “Rock Me Baby”; Jackson seems to tire of the straight, slow blues beat and blasts the tempo into double-time, which kicks off the hottest playing in the set. “Rock Me” turned into one of Hayes’ live medley staples (you can hear it, for example, with “Stormy Monday Blues” on Live at Sahara Tahoe).

The CD version also includes an instrumental workout on “You Don’t Know What I Know,” which Hayes wrote with David Porter for Sam & Dave, and the 20-minute jam from which Hayes’ first Stax single “Precious, Precious” was edited and released in February ‘68. It did not enter the Pop or R&B charts.

I’m not sure the first time I saw Gerald Wexler’s name on an album.

Quite possibly it was the Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles’ “Over The Rainbow” LP in 1965 but I do know that as soul music buff growing up in London, I was certainly aware that Atlantic Records was a haven for some of the best and most emotionally satisfying music I’d ever heard, albeit as a mere ‘falling-in-and-out-of-love’ teenager.

There’s no question that in 1967, Jerry Wexler was more than just a name I’d seen. Already a devotee of Aretha Franklin’s recordings for Columbia (and in particular her latter day work at the label which included such spine-chillers as “(No, No) I’m Losing You” and “Sweet Bitter Love”), I was thrilled when I saw in a November issue of “Billboard” – the magazine for whom Wexler had written in the late ‘40s, coining the term ‘rhythm and blues’ for the first time – a photo of Jerry, Aretha and her then-husband/manager Ted White as she signed on the dotted line with Atlantic. A few weeks later, I was actually on the phone with her: as a Christmas ‘bonus’ at Soul City Records, the store I co-owned in London, I got to call and wish her a merry Xmas! Speaking for the first time to anyone in England, she revealed that she was getting ready to record her first material for Atlantic and how thrilled she was at the prospect.

Neither she nor I – nor I suspect Wexler or anyone else at Atlantic – knew that her union with Atlantic would initiate a career that would place her firmly in the history books of contemporary culture, that she would go from being a ‘marginal’ but exceptional artist at Columbia to being a voice heard around the world for decades, a prime influence on hundreds of female vocalists and an enduring presence in American – indeed, global - life.

I was besides myself when I got my hands on Aretha’s first Atlantic album, the groundbreaking “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You).” That was nothing compared to the surprise that awaited me just months later: Wexler, ever astute and conscious of the British love for R&B, had seen my little article on his new ‘star’ in the UK Atlantic Records’ fanzine and had written to me personally thanking me and included a red-and-white promo of Aretha’s then-brand-new single, “Baby I Love You” backed with “Going Down Slow.” I was floored that a major executive at an American record company would do such a thing and it took me days and days to get over it.

As I began to become even more deeply immersed in R&B, I discovered that it was this same man, this man with a passion and appreciation for the music I too loved, was also responsible for the distribution deal that had brought the sounds of a tiny company in Memphis to the world. Wexler, ears ever open and tuned in, was the architect of the deal that resulted in the music of Stax Records being heard around the globe. Were it not for his foresight, we might never have heard Otis (Redding), William Bell, Booker T & The MGs, The Mar-Keys, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas and her dad Rufus, Mable John and so many more.

In recent tributes to Wexler, who passed away on Friday, August 15 at the age of 91, his association with Ray Charles, his work with all the great Atlantic artists who helped establish the company as a leading light in black music (including Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and before them, The Drifters, Lavern Baker, Clyde McPhatter and others) and of course, his vision in bringing the remarkable artistry of a woman named Aretha to an unsuspecting world have been front and center – and rightfully so. But for this young Brit soul fan, Wexler’s decision to sign that little Memphis company to a pact with Atlantic (no matter how it eventually turned out, business-wise) was major.

Years after Jerry sent me that note and that Aretha 45, I got to meet him in a studio in L.A. when I was doing a special appreciation on Aretha for Britain’s “Blues & Soul” magazine. He was delightful, a real no-nonsense New Yorker, full of great anecdotes and stories. I’m not sure what happened to keep us in touch – other than a shared love for R&B – but we did indeed communicate from time to time on the phone. I called him to tell him I had unearthed an entire album of material that Irma Thomas had recorded for Atlantic/Cotillion in the early ‘70s. Wexler had signed her and he immediately remarked on how the one single that was released, “Full Time Woman” was one of his favorite recordings of all time. I sent him a CD of the album which he deeply appreciated and in return, he sent me some CDs of conversations by old time record executives like Syd Nathan (no relation to me but the founder of King Records) and Hy Weiss of Old Town Records.

Over years, we talked about other artists I loved – Judy Clay, signed to Atlantic but on ‘loan’ to Stax initially who he recalled as being a little ‘difficult’ in the studio but who he remembered (and what a memory!) had cut a version of a Bobby Bland song (“I Pity The Fool”) which was still in the vaults. Of course, we chatted about Aretha and the great sessions he did with her: when I did research for Rhino on Aretha a few years ago, I discovered a demo of “Until You Come Back To Me,” the Stevie Wonder song which gave her a massive early ‘70s hit and hearing Jerry and Aretha chatting was just mind-blowing!

I wish I’d spent more time with Jerry Wexler and talked more about some of those Stax records and material he recorded with the likes of Dee Dee Warwick, The Sweet Inspirations and others. As it is, I’m left with fond memories of a real character, a man who loved to share his lifelong passion for R&B as well as dozens of recordings that bear his name. Oh – and one song, “I Don’t Want To Go On Without You,” something he co-wrote with producer Bert Berns that was recorded by The Drifters, Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles and The Sweet Inspirations. Plaintive and soulful, the song was never a hit but as I listen to it now, I’m reminded of Jerry Wexler, a man who left an indelible imprint on popular music – and through his work and that little package I got in the mail - on a skinny little teenager in London.

With appreciation,

David Nathan
A/k/a the British Ambassador Of Soul
Secretary, The Rhythm & Blues Foundation (www.rhythmblues.org)
Owner,
www.soulmusic.com,
www.soulmusicstore.com,
www.soulmusicglobal.com

“The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town…”

“To an Athlete Dying Young,” by A.E. Housman

I had this all planned out. I had four seats reserved for the Stax 50th Anniversary All-Stars featuring headliner Isaac Hayes, scheduled for Friday August 15 at the Mann Music Center. I was going to enjoy the show last night, then today, write about how wonderful it was to see William Bell, Eddie Floyd, the Bar-Kays and of course “Black Moses” onstage again.

But you know what they say: Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. And instead of commanding the performer’s center stage, Isaac Hayes will command center stage in the city of Memphis for his funeral this Monday, August 18.

Isaac Hayes was my first favorite artist. I don’t presume to write that Isaac Hayes was “the best” or “the greatest,” simply that he was my first favorite. Maybe it was entirely coincidental but I’ll remain eternally grateful for the timing of my birth, born so that I was ten years old when Ike’s “Theme from ‘Shaft‘” broke through. As I grew through my teenage years, his public image was everything that mine was not: Superbad, supremely cool, confident and suave with the ladies, an articulate and confident voice packing tons of soul. Everything that mine was not. So I escaped to and through Isaac Hayes’ music, which helped keep me afloat through my awkward teenage phase that lasted only forever.

I never noticed until his passing how much my taste in his music has evolved as we both grew. I never listened to his post-Stax work much, because almost every one of Hayes’ Enterprise / Stax albums proved so commercially and musically monumental (although his 1991 summit with Barry White, “Dark and Lovely,” was profoundly deep and romantic).

Every single one of Hayes’ Stax albums was a killer. “Theme from ‘Shaft‘” was the first and real mother for me - I suspect like it was for many others, too. Later in the ’70s, a friend of mine was preparing to relocate halfway across the country, and sold me a box of records to save the cost of moving them. The Isaac Hayes Movement was in that box, like a messenger sent to reconnect me - especially through that glorious, gut-wrenching spoken-word intro to the rapturous “I Stand Accused,” which, just like “Shaft,” was both great and unlike any music I had ever heard before. It broke my heart AND blew my mind. Its set-ending cover of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” connected another set of musical dots for this Burt Bacharach-Hal David fan; Hayes’ lifetime affection for recrafting Bacharach-David tunes also made me a Hayes acolyte for life. But lately my favorites have been the sly, revelatory bump ‘n’ grind of “Good Love” from Black Moses and the concert performance of “Do Your Thing,” which first appeared on that Shaft soundtrack 37 years ago, recorded Live at the Sahara Tahoe. It’s pretty much all good.

These are sad days, make no mistake. Isaac Hayes was an amazing composer, arranger, musician, vocalist and performer, and even if the music world everywhere is poorer for his passing, we might instead imagine Barry White now reunited with the best duet partner each one ever had. And as much as I mourn today what seems to have been taken away by Isaac Hayes’ death, I’m more than grateful for the gift of his life and more specifically his body of work. What great soul music is his legacy!

It might be easy to simply consider Isaac Hayes as ‘Black Moses,’ as the distinguished winner of an Oscar for “Theme For Shaft,’ as the man who literally changed the sound of R&B radio in 1969 with his groundbreaking “Hot Buttered Soul,” as a 1977 duet partner with Dionne Warwick – for their famed “A Man And A Woman” tour (I saw it; it was amazing) and to whom he gave the Grammy-winning song “Déjà Vu” as a birthday gift, as a dynamic showman resplendent in gold chains, bald head glistening, a physical giant of a man.

But for old school R&B buffs like me, Isaac Hayes - briefly a sax player with The Mar-Keys and then a keyboard player on several sessions at the Stax studios – was (with songwriting and producing partner David Porter), the genius behind some of the greatest and most soul recordings ever to come out of that studio on McLemore Avenue in Memphis. I’m not talking about the obvious Sam & Dave material – as good as it is and as important as it was for establishing Stax Records as a viable hitmaking machine (and soul music-wise, “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” is still one of the best ballads the duo ever cut). I’m talking Ruby Johnson (“I’ll Run Your Hurt Away”), Mable John (“Your Good Thing”), Johnnie Taylor (“I Got To Love Somebody’s Baby”) and my personal, forever-favorite the late Judy Clay (“Give Love To Save Love,” “It’s Me,” “Remove These Clouds”).

In putting together a musical tribute to Isaac at www.soulmusic.com, I went for those kind of tracks – along with the requisite “Soulsville,” the still-brilliant “Walk On By” (my eternal favorite song) and an often-forgotten duet with Barry White entitled “Dark & Lovely (You Over There),” significant because when Barry first emerged as a recording artist, there were obvious comparisons with Isaac because of their bass-baritone vocal sound. Truly, if there was a ‘definition’ for deep soul, for the kind of chills-down-the-spine, make-the-hair-on-your-neck-stand-up recording, Ike and David’s work – mostly with bluesy female vocalists like Johnson, John and Clay – was it.

Of course, no one makes records like “Your Good Thing” or the stunning “I’ll Run Your Hurt Away” (on which the late Ruby J. wails and churchifies like Otis Redding) anymore, steeped in emotion and passion, lacking all the ‘cleanliness’ of Pro-Tools and pitch-fixers. Isaac and David set it up for soul sisters (and brothers like Johnnie Taylor, with whom they made some masterful sides) to have the right environment, Ike on keyboards, those funky Stax horn players punctuating the track with dead-on timing. The songs were full-on stories – Mable’s “Taking Up Another Man’s Place” is high drama (“you don’t want me to go to the store alone, what kind of man are you? You run over me to answer the telephone…”) and she recalls that “Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” was written as a result of her sharing with Isaac and David about a marriage gone bad. But what made Isaac Hayes and David Porter so compelling as songwriters – beyond their ability to create seriously soul-filled tracks – was their skill at writing songs that everyday folks could relate to. You need go no further than The Soul Children (who tore the house down in Memphis at the Stax 50th last year) whose Hayes-Porter-penned-and-produced “The Sweeter He Is” is an unadulterated classic!

Whenever I was in Isaac’s presence – which was a few times over the years (interviewing him for “Blues & Soul” in the late Seventies a couple of times and then doing a bio for his 1995 Virgin/Pointblank release, “Branded”) – I was always conscious of the musical contribution he had made to me personally as much through “Hot Buttered Soul” and “Shaft” as with the afore-mentioned Stax recordings he did with Judy Clay, Mable and their ilk and was appropriately respectful and awed. It was a real treat for me to put together my own personal musical tribute to Isaac at Soul Music.com (http://www.soulmusic.com/ishatrsomuco.html). I hope you can go check it out and discover for yourself the soulful genius of a man who will be much missed but whose recorded legacy remains intact.

David Nathan
A/k/a the British Ambassador Of Soul
Secretary, The Rhythm & Blues Foundation (www.rhythmblues.org)
Owner,
www.soulmusic.com,
www.soulmusicstore.com,
www.soulmusicglobal.com