He stretched soul until it became something else, and two generations of producers have been quarrying it ever since.
Isaac Hayes rebuilt soul on his own terms at Enterprise, the Stax subsidiary that gave him room to ignore the three-minute single. Hot Buttered Soul arrived in June 1969 with four tracks across forty-five minutes, taking "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Walk On By" and stretching them past the point where they were still cover versions. Shaft followed in 1971 and won him an Academy Award. Black Moses came the same year and sprawled across two LPs.
Hip-hop has been in this catalog for decades, and rarely through the famous tracks. The Dust Brothers built "The Sounds of Science" on Paul's Boutique around "Walk From Regio's," a cue buried in the Shaft soundtrack rather than the theme. Ghostface Killah took "Going in Circles" off Black Moses for "Malcolm." Both flips came from deep inside double albums, which is the useful lesson: the value here is in the track lists, not the covers.
Two things to check before you buy. Hot Buttered Soul has plant variants: Discogs documents distinct Pitman and Monarch pressings of the 1969 Enterprise release under the same catalog number, ENS-1001, so on a record pressed this heavily the runout tells you more than the jacket does. And Black Moses, ENS-2-5003, came in a sleeve that unfolds into a cross-shaped poster, which buyers hung on the wall. The market is now full of listings for the discs with no cover and the cover with no discs, sold separately as art. Read the listing text before you pay for a complete copy.
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