Sunday, October 13, 2024

Various Artists - Covered: Isaac Hayes & David Porter: 1965-1989

Here's another album from my "Covered" series, which highlights the careers of great songwriters. This time, it's the songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

In the 1960s, Hayes and Porter worked for the Stax Records label in Memphis, Tennessee. Both of them were local kids that got involved as session musicians, slowly graduating to producers and songwriters as well. Around 1965, they began writing songs together, mostly for the soul duo Sam and Dave, but also for some others on the Stax label. 

Unfortunately, their collaboration didn't last long. In 1968, Hayes put out a solo album called "Hot Buttered Soul." It was an unexpected hit, turning Hayes into a big soul music star. It, and following albums, mostly consisted of very extended versions of cover songs, so the songwriting team of Hayes and Porter wasn't needed much. As a result, the songwriting team broke up around 1969. But they wrote about 200 songs together during their roughly four years together, many of them all time classics, like "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man."

Porter didn't have much success writing songs with others after Hayes. But Hayes became an even bigger star in the early 1970s, especially with "Theme from 'Shaft'," which was a Number One hit in the U.S. in 1971. Although I've included that song, I avoided other Hayes solo songs, since this is focused on the Hayes-Porter collaboration. The songs here are in chronological order by year, and after "Theme from 'Shaft'" at track 13, all the songs are covers of earlier Hayes-Porter compositions. 

The one exception is "Deja Vu" by Dionne Warwick. That was an instrumental Hayes was working on in the late 1970s. Warwick heard him playing it, and liked it. She asked Hayes if she could finish it off with another songwriter, and he agreed, so she did. That songwriter, Adrienne Anderson, kept the title "Deja Vu" that Hayes gave to the instrumental, and Warwick had a big hit with it.

Here are the Wikipedia entries if you want to know more about them:

Isaac Hayes - Wikipedia

David Porter (musician) - Wikipedia

I tried to select a variety of different performers so I didn't have too many of any one. However, Sam and Dave did so many definitive versions that I kept four of their performances.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 You Don't Know like I Know (Sam & Dave)
02 Boot-Leg (Booker T. & the MG's)
03 Candy (Astors)
04 Hold On, I'm Coming (Sam & Dave)
05 60 Minutes of Your Love (Homer Banks)
06 B-A-B-Y (Carla Thomas)
07 Soul Man (Sam & Dave)
08 I Take What I Want (James & Bobby Purify)
09 Toe Hold (Sharon Tandy)
10 Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody (Cliff Bennett)
11 Your Good Thing [Is about to End] (Lou Rawls)
12 Soul Sister, Brown Sugar (Sam & Dave)
13 Theme from 'Shaft' (Isaac Hayes)
14 You Got Me Hummin' (Cold Blood)
15 I Thank You (ZZ Top)
16 Deja Vu (Dionne Warwick)
17 Wrap It Up (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
18 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17236601/COVRDIsacHyesDvidPrter_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HnTWxBFb

It's easy to find photos of Isaac Hayes, since he was a big star, but it's very hard to find photos of David Porter, since he was a low-profile songwriter. It's even harder to find photos of them together. I found a decent one for the cover, but it's from 2005, decades after their songwriting partnership ended.

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