• Hayes’ 1975 release finally arrives on the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
• Smoother, more musical, with more top end extension and more weight down below, this is the way to hear Isaac Hayes in his prime
• Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful album from 1975, this is a great way to go
• “A fine mid-’70s album on which Isaac Hayes adapted to the disco era. His productions were already ideal for dance floors, and he now updated his charts to include some stomping segments with horns and layered beats, while maintaining his soulful vocals on both up-tempo tunes and ballads.”

This vintage ABC pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What the best sides of Chocolate Chip have to offer is not hard to hear:

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1975
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We’re Listening For on Chocolate Chip

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
• Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt -would have put them.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

The Players

Isaac Hayes – Arranger, keyboards, producer, vocals
Emerson Able – Flute, alto saxophone
Ben Cauley – Trumpet
Lewis Collins – Flute, tenor saxophone
Bill Easley – Flute, alto saxophone
Jack Hale – Trombone
Willie Hall – Drums
The Movement – Guest artist
Floyd Newman – Flute, baritone saxophone
Darrell Smith – Flute, Tenor saxophone
Lester Snell – Fender Rhodes
Errol Thomas – Guitar, bass
Jackie Thomas – Trombone

TRACK LISTING

Side One

That Loving Feeling
Body Language
Chocolate Chip

Side Two

Chocolate Chip (Instrumental)
I Want To Make Love To You So Bad
Come Live With Me
I Can’t Turn Around

AMG  Review

A fine mid-’70s album on which Isaac Hayes adapted to the disco era. His productions were already ideal for dance floors, and he now updated his charts to include some stomping segments with horns and layered beats, while maintaining his soulful vocals on both up-tempo tunes and ballads. This album got two Top 20 hits for Hayes and was his last really big hit album in the ’70s.