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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
 Can you dig it? Damn right!, 2008-01-22
Surprised there's no review of this one. Even though i've got vinyl and cd copies of pretty much all Isaac Hayes' key releases, this compilation is an excellent example of the "one-stop shopping" cd era. Presented in a deluxe package, with a bonus dvd, it has a very generous playing time. It features 32 tracks from his 1968-1977 "golden era". Purchasers shouldn't expect too much of the dvd, however. It doesn't really add very much to the overall package, from a personal point of view.
There's pretty much all you would expect, and i can't think of any glaring omissions in the track selection. There are indispensables like "Walk On By", "I Stand Accused" and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" (edit). Plus a few tracks from the "Shaft" soundtrack, a generous allocation from the "Black Moses" album and just about enough of the key disco stuff. It even features his brilliant "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" from "Hot Buttered Soul". (In its COMPLETE form, no less.) The one slight negative is that the edited version is used for several of the tracks, but that's almost a necessity. (Otherwise there wouldn't be enough room for 32 tracks.) However, that can be compensated by purchasing the original albums, where really necessary.
This album perfectly serves the function of being either an introduction to this major soul artist. Alternatively, it permits a quick "skate" over some of his career highlights for those people who are already fans of this "shaven-headed" soul icon.
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List Price: £14.99
Our Price: £8.70
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
Not Fair at all!, 2010-05-04
How can you have this much good music in this one era... '67 onwards ( Till the Mid 70's till Simon Cowell came along lol.
But seriously, this is one hot album and then you have Curtis, Donald Byrd, Gil Scott-Heron, Lonnie Liston Smith, Temptations and the Blaxploitation tracks to name a few...
Why wasn't I an adult in those 'Pre-Credit Crunch' days (Rant over ;-))
'For The Good Time' in this album is just out of this world. All the tracks are also of superior quality!
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List Price: £18.99
Our Price: £12.01
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
If you only own one Isaac Hayes CD, make it this one., 2000-08-26
To Be Continued was Isaac Haeys' third album, and the last before he changed his co-arranger. In style it sits alongside "Hot buttered Soul" and the "Isaac Hayes Movement", and to me is the most sophisticated of his early works. Hayes' rendition of Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" is a teriffic mix of orchestra, jazz and rhythm sounds that stretches the original song out to something like 12 minutes. Right after this, comes a 15 minute plus combination of the Hayes penned "Ike's Mood" and "You've lost that Lovin' Feeling" - another mammoth track featuring the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. The other tracks are less inspiring, but still worthy. If I could only own one Isaac Hayes CD, I'd make it this one.
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List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £6.25
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
By 1969, black artists were following rock's lead and recording extended epics. At the forefront of such experimentation was big bad Isaac Hayes, co-author of countless Stax classics and an artist in his own right. On this, his second album, Hayes takes two adult-pop benchmarks, Burt Bacharach's "Walk On By" and Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and spins them out into slow-building sermons lasting 12 and 18.5 minutes apiece. Heavily romantic, they predate by two years Barry White's symphonic adventures in the same style, revolutionising soul music in the process. Meanwhile, on the album's third epic, the 10-minute "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic", Hayes and...
Hot Buttered Soul - Isaac Hayes., 2009-07-30
Funky, soulful, romantic, groundbreaking and a very good listen. Just a few of the hyperbolic adjectives that spring to mind when thinking about this superb album.
This is an album of deeply funky soul. With the extended cuts and luscious orchestration, mixed with Hayes unique soulful vocals it feels like Stax soul meets prog rock. The 10-20 minute tracks never outstay their welcome though.
The standout is the opening 'Walk on by', a 12 minute epic that slowly builds annd builds, with Hayes almost teasing you as whether or not he's going to sing. The other tracks follow in a similar vein, long, laid back grooves.
Very much an album to played late at night, alone with that special someone.
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List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £6.24
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
The "Theme from Shaft" is now so ingrained in popular consciousness as the blaxploitation-movie track that it's hard to listen to it without a faint smirk. ("Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?"!!) But if you can get past the inadvertent humour, it's still a devilishly exciting piece of music--all hi-hat 16ths, wah-wah guitar, strings and woodwind, like a Norman Whitfield Motown production taken to a baroque extreme. The rest of the album consists mainly of incidental mood music of no great worth: "Walk from Regio's", "Ellie's Love Theme"--you know the sort of thing. Only two other tracks feature the Black Moses pipes, while ...
This is the one to get!, 2010-08-05
I bought the 'Expanded Edition' of this brilliant soundtrack but as another reviewer said there was virtually no bass on it so I returned it. I bought this one instead and to me it sounds great, just as it should. I'd recommend buying this one and avoiding the 'Expanded Edition. Incidentally, 'Do Your Thing' on this release is the full 19 minute version so it's all good (and you get spared the pointless 2009 remix as well).
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List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £6.25
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
 The Premier Blaxploitation soundtrack?, 2010-04-03
Not the first blaxploitation soundtrack, (that was Melvin van Peebles with Sweet Sweetback's Baaadaass Song, according to experts), but the Daddy of them all, from before the genre had been named, and mined to extinction.
Isaac Hayes previous included a songwritng partnership with David Porter at Stax, where they gave Sam and Dave a string of hits, a distinctive live show, and a couple of solo albums, the second of which, "Hot Buttered Soul", catapulted him to the top of the Soul tree. When Gordon Parks wanted a soundtrack for his "black private dick" movie, he knew where to go, and Hayes didn't disappoint.
From those opening hihats to that funk/rock workout which closes "Do Your Thing", there's everything from Jazz to the Blues, languid instrumentals to Rock solos, and a dose of social comment. If Hayes had helped rewrite the Soul album format, then here he throws in the kitchen sink to create the album soundtrack that would win an Oscar. The title track remains one of the most instantly recognisable around and the rest of the album is a snapshot of the state of Black music as the 70's kicked in.
To be fair, there's a couple of unremarkable tracks - this is a soundtrack after all - but other than the tital track, stand-outs include; Cafe Regio's a jazzy mid tempo instrumental, Soulsville, Isaac Hayes bitter commentary on ghettto life and "Do Your Thing", which kicks off on a sensuous groove, which builds and builds over nearly 20 minutes, with the aformentioned kitchen sink appearing about half way through !!.
All in all, a very significant album, not least because of it's place in the domination that Black music achieved in the early/mid 70's, and one which no self respecting Soul music fan should be without
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List Price: £8.99
Our Price: £4.68
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
It was forty years ago ?????, 2009-06-04
I can remember well the first time I heard this album. Used to a diet of Soul from the more commercial end of the spectrum, this was the album that sent me on a journey to discover Soul and Funk in all its forms - and I never got to thank him!!
You have to remember that, 40 years ago, Soul albums to this point had usually consisted of 2 or 3 hit singles and a few other tracks that weren't considered commercial enough for single release. Ike changed all that with this, his second album for Stax, released as part of a 27 album blitz, designed to put Stax back on top after the death of Otis, and the loss of the back catalogue to Atlantic (both in '68).
The track selection probably didn't take too long, there are only 4 tracks after all, and the format had been established by Ike in his live shows, as he stretched out standards with raps and instrumental breaks, to take Soul places it had never been before. It was all a long way away from the gritty, sweaty Southern Soul Hayes had written with David Porter for Sam & Dave, among others, and which had earned him the right to do things his way.
I cannot hear Ike's version of "Walk on By" without marvelling at the sheer audacity of the man - but I love it, the strings, the guitars, the slow build up (will he ever sing?) and then the gravelly vocal - epic stuff. There's more - "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" is the same, but more so, and while "One Woman" is almost standard fare, Hyper..." was the forerunner of the funk workouts for which Ike would become famous on later albums.
Isaac Hayes would go on to make one of the best known Soul/Funk albums in "Shaft", which has come to overshadow "Hot Buttered Soul" to some extent, but the impact of this album can hardly be underestimated - it ushered in an era where the album became important in Soul, bringing in Orchestral, Jazz and Rock influences, and predated equally influential sets by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway among many others,
This may take a couple of plays for you to get into, but it's worth the effort, just play it through the way it was meant to be heard - there was no-one quite like Ike, gone but not forgotten. RIP.
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List Price: £5.99
Our Price: £3.39
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
The Very Best of Isaac Hayes, 2009-03-13
Great album of Hayes' Stax years although the songs are not the original full-length album versions. They are single edits.
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List Price: £5.99
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
Close your eyes and float with Isaac Hayes, 2004-07-04
The best way to listen to this album is to turn down the lights close your eyes and let yourself float with the music of MR Isaac Hayes it is a truely emotional experience and this is his best album ever!
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List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £5.00
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Artist:
Isaac Hayes
Live at Sahara Tahoe, 2009-06-23
I am gradually replicating my entire vinyl collection on cd. I really should have got this one sooner. Very few artists can sound better live than in the studio but Isaac Hayes is one of them. It feels like you are there. Brilliant.
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List Price: £14.99
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![Ultimate Isaac Hayes: Can You Dig It [2CD + DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51mxpOZULLL._SL160_.jpg "Ultimate Isaac Hayes: Can You Dig It [2CD + DVD]")
