A double helping of hot buttered soul

By the time Isaac Hayes released this double-LP in 1971, he’d already parlayed a pivotal career as house songwriter, musician and producer at Stax into a starring role as a recording artist. For Black Moses, Hayes stuck to the formula that had made him famous, extending pop and soul tunes, adding spoken passages and layering on smooth orchestration. His power as a vocal interpreter was at its height, not only on the album’s best known tracks (“Never Can Say Goodbye” and “Never Gonna Give You Up”), but also on a pair of Curtis Mayfield tunes (“Man’s Temptation” and “Need to Belong to Someone”), a pair by Bacharach/David ( “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and the formerly white bread “Close to You”), the Friends of Distinctions’ “Going in Circles,” and Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times.”

The few originals include a couple of lengthy raps paired with ballads, and the funky “Good Love.” This double-CD reissue reproduces the album’s original fourteen tracks without bonuses, and stores the discs in a labyrinthine digipack that unfolds into a six-panel image of Hayes in his Black Moses garb. The album’s superb original liner notes, written by Chester Higgins, and reproduced within the folds. Many fans mark this as their favorite album in Hayes’ catalog, but it’s neither as fresh as previous go-rounds like 1969’s Hot Buttered Soul, nor as original as the same year’s soundtrack to Shaft. This is as solid as anything Hayes recorded, it’s just not, five albums into his recording career, as innovative. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Isaac Hayes’ Home Page
Stax Museum of American Soul Music