David Porter, “Can’t See You When I Want To”
Released April 1970
From the album Gritty, Groovin’ & Getting’ It
#29 R&B, #105 Pop single

Porter launched his post-Isaac Hayes solo career in 1970 by re-doing a single he had first recorded for Stax in 1965. “Can’t See You When I Want To” was written in the early days of the Hayes-Porter songwriting partnership (though Hayes for some reason is credited through the pseudonym “Ed Lee”) and this first solo single served as the centerpiece of Porter’s set at Wattstax.

By the time Porter re-recorded “Can’t See You When I Want To,” Hayes was well on his way to solo superstardom - so far down this superstar path, in fact, that even though he nominally worked on the new rhythm track for Porter with the Bar-Kays “house band,” while Porter cut the lead vocal, overdubbed the background strings and vocals, and did the final mix, Porter listed Hayes as the session’s producer. “I didn’t put my name down as producer even though I did most of the work on the album,” Porter later recalled, “because I wanted clout. I needed his name attached to mine in my mind.”

This studio single version seems to suspend Porter between male soul vocal generations: The passion and strength in his vocal often whips up the primal urgency of an Otis Redding shout. But its horns, strings, background vocals and crystalline piano, which sort of swirl around that vocal like a musical garland Porter extends to his unrequited lady love, grow into an early example of the type of “quiet storm” soul ballad that made Teddy Pendergrass, for example, a superstar of ’70s soul.

But no matter what style you call it, or whose name came attached to it, “Can’t See You When I Want To” is one of David Porter’s best Stax singles.

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