Hayes, Isaac – “Isaac Hayes Movement, The” – [Enterprise Records]

Naysayer   10/12/2013   12-inch, Soul

“The Isaac Hayes Movement” is Isaac Hayes’ third LP, out in 1970, and continues his work with long, orchestrated soul pieces. This is a year before “Shaft” came out which would change popular music. This is almost two years before Hayes would twist the heads off of Americans when he performed “Shaft” at the Academy Awards wearing no shirt and a gold floor length chain vest, singing with a group of dancers in soul hippie garb and the most outrageous afros seen on prime time. “The Isaac Hayes Movement” is a much more subdued, yet rich album. Hayes already had a full career coming out of the Memphis sound and working with Stax Records as a musician, composer and arranger, so his knowledge was solid. This album took his skills in arrangement and orchestration as well as his interest in reinterpreting other composers songs and twisted them to make them most definitely his own. While Barry White’s deep voice and pulsing rhythms are the music you want to have sex to, Hayes’ sonorous vocals with his lush instrumentation make him the guy you want to have sex with, while listening to his music. Listen to the first five minute monologue he gives to his best friend’s fianc??, telling her how much he loves her, before he breaks into the lyrics of Jerry Butler’s “I Stand Accused”, and try and tell me you don’t want to let Isaac take you away. In four songs, two sides, Hayes turns George Harrison’s “Something”, Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” and Chalmers and Rhodes “One Big Unhappy Family” into a new kind of soul, one rich and varied, taking time to explore with full on orchestrations that sweep and dip through and around Hayes’ vocals that melt the heart. So smooth and rich. A pure joy. And the man knows how to wear a zebra print coat, pants and matching hat. Natch.