Tiggerlion on Hot Buttered Soul by Isaac Hayes

The fortunes of Isaac Hayes and Stax Records in Memphis are inextricably linked. He first auditioned for the newly-named label in 1961 and covered on keyboards for Booker T. Jones in The M.G.s when Jones was away completing his university studies. By the mid sixties, Stax’s imperial phase, he’d teamed up with David Porter to write and produce a host of hit records, most notably Soul Man and Hold On (I’m Coming) for Sam & Dave, an act loaned to the label by Atlantic.

In December 1967, Stax’s star man, Otis Redding, died in a plane clash, an accident that also claimed the lives of most of his backing band, The Bar-Kays, too. In early 1968, the agreement with Atlantic fell apart and Atlantic took Stax’s back catalogue with them, as well as acts like Sam & Dave. Memphis, the city, was also in crisis with a sanitation workers’ strike, a stand-off with the authorities led by a white, racist mayor, the murder of Martin Luther King in a Memphis motel and the rise of black power threatening the balance of mixed race there was in the company.

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