40 Year Itch : A Walking Sex Machine

A 1975 ad for Striped Chips Ahoy!

Isaac Hayes : Chocolate Chip

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In the Summer of '75 every issue of Jet Magazine had another story about Isaac Hayes owning somebody money, more than a half a million dollars all told. In the meantime, the kids were jamming out to the dy-no-mite title track from his latest album, the #1 R and B smash Chocolate Chip. It would not be a big enough hit to get Hayes out of his financial woes. He would have to declare bankruptcy at the tail end of the 1970's. Twenty five years later, Hayes would revisit his sweet side on the South Park soundtrack with  Chef's"Chocolate Salty Balls".

40 Year Itch; Top 10 Soul Albums

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 1974 would be a good year for pillow talking "prophet of love", Barry White. His 1973 album, Stone Gon', spent February 2 atop the Soul Album charts thanks to the hit single "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up", a top 10 hit. The 40-piece Love Unlimited Orchestra Barry invented was racing up the pop charts with "Love's Theme" which would peak at #1 the following week. 

Two future 1974 singles would also be big hits : "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe " topping both the pop and R and B charts and "You're the First, the Last, My Everything " which would top the soul charts and peak at #2 behind Elton John's "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". 

The #1 soul single this week was "Let Your Hair Down" from The Temptations album 1990 which, like most of the Temps 70's albums, remains out of print.

2. The O Jays Ship Ahoy

3. Gladys Knight and the Pips Imagination

                                         

4. Temptations 1990

5. Al Green Livin' For You

6. Bobby Blue Bland His California Album

7. James Brown The Pay Back

8. Love Unlimited Under the Influence of Love Unlimited

9. Kool and the Gang Wild and Peaceful

10. Isaac Hayes Joy

40 Year Itch: Black Moses In The Mountains

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This is our last night and last show so we gonna get down tonight
-Isaac Hayes


With his 20 piece orchestra, the Issac Hayes Connection, in the shadows and the man himself draped in gold chains and sunglasses, Live at the Sahara Tahoe is Issac "Black Moses" Hayes's contribution to my collection of great live albums from 1970's soul singers. ( Along with Bill Withers Live At Carnegie Hall, Donny Hathaway Live and Curtis Mayfield's  Curtis/Live!). Hayes was on a roll at the time, with five consecutive million selling albums.



Tahoe may seem to be strange place to record a R and B album but I saw Funkadelic there and I can promise you it's not the locals who show up but fans who drive in from the Bay Area. Live at the Sahara Tahoe is a double album and features extended reinterpretations of classic 70's fare like Carole King's "It's Too Late" and Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine" (in which Hayes picks up the saxophone and goes it alone to the ecstatic cheers of audience members).



The album ends with a cover of  "Feelin' Alright" which, one year later, Hayes would perform with the Osmonds on The Osmond Brothers Musical Special.Clearly there was no decade quite like the 70's.