The second disc in the recent Wattstax: The Living Word concert documentary / soundtrack highlights performances by two artists extremely important to the label’s prospects in 1972.

As soul music transitioned from the 1960s into the ’70s, the Bar-Kays more or less assumed the role of label “house band” from Booker T. & the MGs, serving as the rhythm section, for example, on Isaac Hayes’ landmark Hot Buttered Soul and Music from the Motion Picture ‘Shaft’. Their set opens with “Son of ‘Shaft’,” well-intentioned if overenthusiastic psychedelic soul. “Son” segues into the seething “Feel It,” which features colorful audience participation tips (”We’re gonna give everybody a chance to play with what you’ve got. You ain’t got nothng to play with, reach over to the person next to you and ask ‘em if you can use theirs…”).

Psychedelic rock-funk with electric guitar sprawled throughout (very like the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing,” especially its wobbly horn chart), “In the Hole” sets up the Bar-Kays’ finale, which honors “the father of the Memphis sound, Otis Redding,” by stomping out “I Can’t Turn You Loose.” 

Then this second disc demonstrates what soul history might call “the David Porter solo push.” Porter co-composed many of the label’s ’60s hits with Isaac Hayes, but when Hayes’ solo career skyrocketed in the early 1970s it stranded Porter without his partner. Porter released romantic soul music under the unfortunate marketing guise of a kind of “black Valentino,” which is how he’s introduced to the Wattstax stage to perform two ballads (”Ain’t That Loving You (For More Reasons Than One)” and “Can’t See You When I Want To”) with a seductive gentlemanly charm that bridges the musical generations between ’60s soul shouters such as Redding and ’70s soul balladeers such as Teddy Pendergrass.

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