999,894: Isaac Hayes — By the Time I Get to Phoenix

A devout Scientologist in life, nowadays the late Isaac Hayes is surely yachting around The Hereafter with L. Ron Hubbard, clad in white coveralls, grinning his lopsided grin, and taking his turn at the helm of The Enchanter II whenever L. Ron needs to pee.

As he points the ship into yet another breathtaking sunset- where Isaac is, all the sunsets are breathtaking- I hope he feels a swell of pride when he thinks of the fantastic music he created in life. And when he thinks of his musical mistakes, I hope he sees that they were largely a result of his inability to edit himself, or better yet, to keep someone around willing to tell him he was doing something stupid.

Maybe he once had that someone, and maybe it was David Porter. In the early days of Stax records, Hayes and Porter wrote over 200 tight little soul nuggets for the label's artists, including the Sam & Dave hits Soul Man, I Thank You, and their debut single Hold On I’m Coming. No cinematic strings. No overlong and self indulgent breakdowns. And certainly no pointless 8 minute monologues. Just the solid moody soul that Hayes did so well.

Eventually, he and Porter parted ways, and soon thereafter Hayes started working on Hot Buttered Soul, his breakout second solo album. If Porter was the guy putting the kibosh on Hayes's worst self-indulgent tendencies, I believe he would have saved his harshest criticism for some of Hayes’s later decisions (“Ike, do NOT do a disco record!”) and gone along, maybe reluctantly, with most of Hot Buttered Soul. He probably just would have clucked his tongue a bit, warning Black Moses that his brooding cover of Walk On By is awesome, but too much of that long ass string shit is going to drain all the funk out of everything.

One choice I’m sure the Porter of my imagination would have called Black Moses out on, though, is the monologue that starts this track. We don't need all of this background, especially since, when the song proper starts in (at 8:38!) Ike’s tortured baritone provides all the back story this song needs, injecting each note with a quantity of raw soul that would have been lethal to Glen Campbell. Porter would have thought long and hard about how the song ends, but eventually he'd realize that sure the strings are sappy, but they fit, and they’re pretty, and the slow, gentle build suits the song perfectly as its protagonist achieves romantic escape velocity.

I hope David Porter is a Scientologist, because when he dies, I bet he and Hayes will do a ripping 8 minute version on the Enchanter II’s Cabana Deck.

By The Time I Get To Phoenix -...