Shaft

OK, today I want to talk about the Shaft theme song.  The connoisseurs may talk about "Hot Buttered Soul", but this song, this is probably the biggest defining moment of Isaac Hayes' career.  I mean, for real, this thing is still _the_ definitive sound of blaxploitation funk, and that's with, like, Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack to "Superfly" as competition.  Have you _heard_ the soundtrack to Superfly?  It's fucking AMAZING!

The theme to "Shaft" is one of those songs that forever dances on the line between being badass and goofy.  Wah-wah guitar has become completely, indelibly identified with the goofier parts of the '70s, for instance, but Charles Pitts' guitar here is good enough to transcend those associations.  Same way, the lyrics?  Those are some utterly goofy lyrics.  Hayes sells them, though.

No, the goofiest thing about Shaft is that everybody in the world felt like they had to do their own version of it, no matter how completely and totally unsuited they were to tackling Hayes' funk barnburner.  Tony Orlando and Dawn did a version on their TV show.  Did you know that?  Look, here's some analog hole video to prove it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ5GNeyHezU

I actually don't listen to the Isaac Hayes version.  I just love listening to these bizarre detritus takes, sometimes hopelessly unfunky, sometimes surprisingly funky.

The first people to get their hands on the Shaft theme seem to have been the string cover version people.  This was a huge thing - Enoch Light and the Light Brigade did a version, the Hollyridge Strings did a version.  What they were doing, well, I don't know if it was that different from what groups like 2Cellos do now.  If the idea was that adding a bunch of strings would make the song more mellow, well, it tended to turn out stranger in practice.  The Hollyridge Strings' version has these big boxy drums and psychedelic phasing on the title.  Plus the wah-wah is fully intact.  All of the other lyrics get replaced with instrumental ba-ba-bas - now it is true that the original song used a word that was considered slightly profane at the time, and hinted towards the word "motherfucker".

The Enoch Light version is even weirder.  Enoch Light and the Light Brigade did some weird goddamn shit for stuff that's thought of today as schmalz.  Like instead of opening with wah-wah funk we have like fuckin' tabla.  If the rest of the playing is occasionally a little stiff, the percussion here is driving and powerful.  We also have a fair bit of sax in the style of GE Smith and the Saturday Night Live band - not a style I usually am fond of it but it works OK here.

Alan Hawkshaw over in England did his own version.  Hawkshaw, well, he has a reputation of being one of the funkiest of the British '70s TV and film composers, along with Alan "Bullet" Tew, and Hawkshaw definitely lives up to that reputation here.  The wah-wah is fierce, and the arrangement opens with the stark dramatic feel that characterizes much of his best work.  After this the ensemble gets filled in by some tuned percussion.  It's fascinating to hear all the different timbres different arrangers approached this with.  You can do a lot with this song and still have it recognizable.  Now, on this one, having the organ take the melody lead is perhaps not as strong a choice as it could be, but the persistent wah-wah here definitely makes this one a keeper.  Like Enoch Light's version Hawkshaw's is instrumental.

Sammy Davis Jr. - I mentioned this one in one of my early posts, I think.  This has a whole new set of vocals and boy, if you thought the original lyrics were stupid, you should hear Sammy's take.  This is complete, pure, 100% cornball cheese, the sort of thing that renders parody unnecessarily.

The Onstage Majority - Oh!  Now we're getting into the real shit here - private press lounge covers.  This, again, was a HUGE thing.  There are probably hundreds of private press lounge records with different versions of Shaft.  I've only heard a select few, myself.  Honestly, it is difficult to break these down and differentiate them.  What brings this one is not only an organ that's more energetic than Hawkshaw's, but the distinctly un-funky lounge lizard delivery of the lyrics.  Stick around to the end (I haven't) and you can hear their ten minute "Jesus Christ Superstar" medley!

The Social Circle - Another private press lounge version!  The rest of the record is pretty much made up of very '70s medleys - they, too, have one from Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as one from Cabaret.  Then their last is of '30s and '40s classics.  I think the reason I kept this around is the very clear presence of the Mellotron, which is a musical instrument I'm sort of a sucker for.  It's extremely badly played - in fairness, it's not really the sort of instrument suited to an up-tempo funk song in the first place.  The vocals don't have the same unctuous vim as the Onstage Majority's version, but it's still fantastic to hear how less accomplished ensembles try to essay the interrupted "motherfucker" bit of the song.

The Esquires LTD - This is actually from a Numero comp of records from the Bahamas.  In contrast to other versions, this rendition has more of a laid-back feel.  I appreciate its easy groove.  It's also more stripped down instrumentally, with no horns.  The lead vocalist's diction is not 100% - I suspect English is not his first language.  He's also dealing with backing singers who blatantly miss their cues on the "shut your mouth" section, leading it to be a total trainwreck.  That said, his delivery is fairly impassioned and soulful, compared to the awkward recitation one tends to get from cover versions.  It doesn't hurt that the group is far more in sync instrumentally than they are vocally.

Henryk Debich - Oh, I do believe we're into the disco era here.  This sounds distinctly like a disco beat.  The piano notes during the intro are also very reminiscent of the "Jaws" theme.  We also for some reason have a whole shitload of phasing going on here.  I'm not sure how necessary it is, but I like some nice psychedelic phasing so I can't complain too much.  There's a tremendous amount of emphasis on the bass timbres when the main melody hits.  The recitative portion is absent altogether - instead there's a big dramatic hit and then we're straight onto the finale, with some nice drum breaks.  Another distinct and high quality take on the theme.

Decimo - Did I say Henryk Debich's version was disco?  Oh, this is disco.  It goes on for quite some time - ten minutes worth!  '78 was a little late to really expect Shaft to be a disco floor-filler, but hell, you could say the same for "Night on Bald Mountain" I guess.  We have an excellent string-heavy interlude section added here, and if it's not the _best_ such I've heard, it certainly gives it more of an epic feel, particularly when it's being used to accompany a guitar solo with a pretty filthy, psychedelic tone for a disco record.  By the time we get to the breakdown the song has built up a serious disco groove.

South Carolina State College Jazz Ensemble - There are two sorts of private press '70s records where you're most likely to find a version of the "Shaft" theme: Lounge records and school jazz band records.  This is a college jazz ensemble record and therefore is more tight and professional than you would hear from a high school group.  The fact that they've worked up an arrangement of Shaft at all in '79 says a little something about their relative ambitions or lack thereof, mind.  Still, the arrangement is suitably punchy.  There are probably better version of this song on school jazz band records, and there is probably someone who has listened to every single school jazz band record from the '70s still known to be in existence and can tell you precisely what the best versions are.  Still, this is a solid take, even if it's perhaps a little over the top in its arrangement.  No wah-wah at all here.  It's all about the horns.

Cheer-Accident - I find this deconstruction, from 1991's "20 Explosive Dynamic Super Smash Hit Explosions!" comp, to be extremely endearing.  Cheer-Accident here sort of pioneer these sorts of supremely fucked up deconstructed versions of songs like "All-Star" by Smashmouth _avant la lettre_.  I'm not musically versed enough to be able to tell you exactly what they're doing here, but the guitar sounds like Robert Fripp on a particularly bad day in 1974 - just a completely hellish maelstrom of noise.  Oh, and the vocal section, the singer essays as though he is trying to choke out the lyrics while literally being strangled.  Followed by an abrupt switch to a different recording where layers of voices, all out of tune with each other, sing the "He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman" line.  Then the song goes to repeat the same song-ending hit over and over again in an aggressively anti-rhythmic manner, the same sort of systematic personality breakdown as portrayed in "Fracture" except more unrelenting.  It's fucking brilliant, is what I'm saying.

So I've spent an hour listening to that wah-wah funk figure straight writing this post and I haven't tired of it yet.  I tip my hat to you, messrs. Hayes and Pitts.