Isaac Hayes: Walk On By

By at 12:59 pm Thursday, Dec 3

I've been answering email today with a bunch of Isaac Hayes songs on rotation from the Stax years. Kept coming back to this one, and stumbled on a 1969 television performance with spectacularly mod staging. Walk on by that large pastel brick with the embedded mirror-donut! The audio in this YouTube clip stinks, but you can preview a better streaming version here. The full, funky glory of the extended 12-minute version is such a thing of beauty, though. Listen to that fuzz guitar! This masterpiece has been sampled to hell by many different artists over the years (Hooverphonic's "2Wicky" may be the most popular). I think of great, timeless tracks like this as big cuts of high-quality meat that can be sliced into little pieces as they age, and made into lesser leftovers by lesser chefs. RIP, Chef.

Read more 

Xeni Jardin

Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net.

Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.