Shaft

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Shaft album cover
Album Information

Total Tracks: 16   Total Length: 74:26

eMusic Features

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Six Degrees of Tom Waits’s Bad as Me

By Austin L. Ray, eMusic Contributor

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »

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Six Degrees of Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation of Millions…

By Christopher R. Weingarten, eMusic Contributor

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »

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eMusic Yearbook: 2007

By Vijith Assar, eMusic Contributor

There's really no debating that 2007 will be remembered, first and foremost, as the year Radiohead gleefully suicide-bombed those last stubborn fragments of the old music industry and swept the smoldering remnants into the new millennium. That story has already been told several thousand times over, though, so let's instead turn our attention to its polar opposite: Daptone Records, a tiny time-capsule studio and label in Brooklyn which channels the decades-gone glory days of R&B… more »

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The Ponderosa Stomp

By John Morthland, eMusic Contributor

The Ponderosa Stomp, which is organized essentially by record collectors and takes place in New Orleans mid-week between the two Jazzfest weekends, is an eMusic.com kind of event. It's a two-night, marathon (6 PM to 4 AM) celebration of the unsung heroes and one-hit wonders of American music, including early rock 'n'roll, rockabilly, swamp pop, blues, soul, funk and garage bands. Needless to say, many of them record for independent labels. So many, in fact,… more »

They Say All Music Guide

Of the many wonderful blaxpoitation soundtracks to emerge during the early ’70s, Shaft certainly deserves mention as not only one of the most lasting but also one of the most successful. Isaac Hayes was undoubtedly one of the era’s most accomplished soul artists, having helped elevate Stax to its esteemed status; therefore, his being chosen to score such a high-profile major-studio film shouldn’t seem like a surprise. And with “Theme from Shaft,” he delivered an anthem just as ambitious and revered as the film itself, a song that has only grown more treasured over the years, after having been an enormously popular hit at the time of its release. Besides this song, though, there aren’t too many more radio-targeted moments here. “Soulsville” operates effectively as the sort of downtempo ballad Hayes was most known for, just as the almost 20-minute “Do Your Thing” showcased just how impressive the Bar-Kays had become, stretching the song to unseen limits with their inventive, funky jamming. For the most part, though, this double-LP features nothing but cinematic moments of instrumentation, composed and produced by Hayes while being performed by the Bar-Kays — some downtempo, others quite jazzy, nothing too funky, though. Even if it’s not quite as enjoyable as Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly due to its emphasis on instrumentals, Shaft still remains a powerful record; one of Hayes’ pinnacle moments for sure. – Jason Birchmeier

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