Isaac Hayes’ backers move closer to front
You might recognize the guitar riff that provides the chorus melody for Beyoncé’s “6 Inch.” Or perhaps you’re familiar with the creeping bass line that drives the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Warning” — it rolls out of speakers like a storm cloud, maybe, or a tank. If not, you’ve surely heard one of the other 89 songs that sample Isaac Hayes’ 12-minute version of Burt Bacharach’s “Walk on By.”
The music that Hayes recorded from 1969 through 1971 has supplied the hooks, beats and textures for more than 500 songs by other artists. When Hayes died in 2008, however, the proto-disco “Theme From Shaft” and his voice performance as the character of Chef on “South Park” crowded much of the rest of his extraordinary legacy out of obituary headlines.
A recent boxed set, “The Spirit of Memphis (1962-1976),” puts that legacy on full display. Not only does it give an overview of the most fertile years of Hayes’ career, it also shines a light on the versatile musicians who consistently backed him: One of the four discs is entirely dedicated to spotlighting the band’s interplay.
“We were the tightest band you’d ever find,” said keyboardist Lester Snell, who joined Hayes shortly before the recording of the “Shaft” soundtrack, which won two Grammys and an Academy Award. “It could be straight-out jazz or Jimi Hendrix, but no matter what was going on, you never lost the groove.”
Like many studio musicians, Snell and his peers, who spoke of their work in telephone interviews, were often not listed in album credits. With no documentary film to attest to their contributions, they haven’t enjoyed the kind of rediscovery afforded James Brown’s bands, or Motown’s Funk Brothers, or the Los Angeles-based session players the Wrecking Crew.
In early 1969, after Stax lost its back catalog when Warner Bros. bought its distributor, Atlantic Records, Stax’s president ordered the rush production of 28 new albums. In this frenzy, Hayes, a staff writer and producer — who, along with his songwriting partner David Porter had generated hit records for Sam & Dave (“Soul Man”) and Carla Thomas (“BA-B-Y”) — was given a green light to record a solo album with complete creative control. Hayes chose the rhythm section of the Bar-Kays for accompaniment.
The young Bar-Kays had already been through plenty. Stax had hoped to groom them as the next Booker T. and the MG’s, the house band that had broken out as a headliner in its own right. But only months after their song “Soul Finger” became a hit, four of the BarKays perished in the 1967 plane crash that killed Otis Redding. The group’s 20-year-old trumpeter, Ben Cauley, was the sole surviving passenger; bassist James Alexander, 19, had not been on the flight.
With their manager, they began rebuilding. Drummer Willie Hall, who was 17 at the time, and guitarist Michael Toles, who was 15, joined, and they rushed to release an album under the group name. Hall said the band was as green as goose droppings, though he used more colorful language. “We didn’t know anything,” he said, “but the company needed something out there before the sympathy died.”
It wasn’t long afterward that Hayes began sitting in with the group at Memphis club gigs and leading the musicians through chord changes while he rhapsodized at length. By the time they were backing him in the studio, a musical intuition had formed. Alexander’s relentlessly agile bass lines bandied with Hall’s stop-time rhythms; Toles’ finger-stretching guitar figures cut through Hayes’ thick organ.
“We recorded ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ in two days,” Alexander said. “He gave you a creative direction, maybe a line to play, and we kept going.”
When guitarist Harold Beane stopped by the studio for a mixing session, Hayes asked him to improvise freely.
“He told me, ‘I want to take it out of the box,’ so I turned on the fuzz tone and turned up the tremolo,” said Beane, whose lengthy “Walk on By” solo evokes both buzz saws and Morse code. Beane then began playing in Hayes’ touring band, before joining Funkadelic.
“Hot Buttered Soul” became a sensation. Toles and Hall left the Bar-Kays band, which had hired a lead singer and begun moving toward more danceoriented funk on its own very popular albums. Adding a second guitarist, Charles Pitts, known as Skip; keyboardists Sidney Kirk and Snell; and horn players, including trumpeter Mickey Gregory, the group was re-christened the Isaac Hayes Movement.