1000 Day Album Challenge (#19) Isaac Hayes: Tough Guys (1974) [19.01.24]
I sit alone in my four-cornered room / starin' at candles / oh, that shit is on?...
this is the shit Scarface is talkin’ about – Hung Up On My Baby by Isaac Hayes. what a tune. I remember when I first heard it. it was 1992 or 1993 not long after we had moved into our place on Frederick and Stanyan in the Upper Haight. I had put in a few solid days of digging. too many used record and thrift stores to recall. I had dozens and dozens of records to check out.
Tough Guys must have sat around for days after I brought it home. I had bought it sealed at a thrift store probably for no more than a dollar. all I knew was that it was Isaac Hayes and quite obviously a soundtrack to a blaxploitation flick with which I was unfamiliar. it was not unusual for me to take a while before checking out all of my new purchases when I bought a ton in a short period of time which I did a fair amount of the time.
I finally got around to checking it out. after tearing off the plastic wrap I’m sure I kinda needle dropped my way through the first time. listening to Tough Guys as I write this I’m fairly certain that Joe Bell, the last track on side one, was the only one I might have listened to all the way through, nothing else there that would have caught my ear.
then I turned it over and everything changed. Hung Up On My Baby – “oh my god! that’s the tune the Geto Boys sampled for Mind Playing Tricks On Me.” I think I just about jumped out of my skin. it wasn’t just a great sample. it was a great tune. those two are not always synonymous. I don’t recall precisely, buy I think I must have listened to it over and over at the time. I would have also busted out Mind Playing Tricks On Me too.
as the years have passed I have returned to the Geto Boys less and less, but I always return to Hung Up On My Baby. it is a brilliant and funky instrumental that has a bit of a down home feel to it. there’s a nice groovy guitar solo in the middle that ties it all together.
#1000DayAlbumChallange #IsaacHayes #ToughGuys #HungUpOnMyBaby #GetoBoys #MindPlayingTricksOnMe