David Porter, Victim Of The Joke? An Opera

Before he provided the voice of Chef on South Park, Isaac Hayes co-wrote R&B classics like Sam & Dave's "Soul Man" and "Hold On! I'm Coming" with a fellow Memphis, Tennessee, collaborator whose name is buried deeply in music history books, if at all: David Porter. While Hayes became the Shaft-celebrating Black Moses of '70s soul, Porter attempted a similarly orchestrated solo career by mixing down-home funk (here provided by the Bar-Kays and the Memphis Horns) with astoundingly elaborate symphonics.

Porter's 1971 album, Victim of the Joke?: An Opera, overlays even more drama in the form of extended spoken interludes chronicling the delirious private ups and catastrophic public downs of an archetypal love triangle. Although voice-acted with period blaxploitation excess, most of the talky segments pale next to Porter's musical grandiloquence. Like Hayes, Porter transforms pop hits like the Beatles '"Help!" into widescreen soul extravaganzas boasting jagged rhythm guitars, biting trumpet blasts and cooing female background singers. Porter's own opening and closing compositions provide much up-tempo momentum, but it's his labyrinthine treatment of the Tin Pan Alley oldie "The Masquerade Is Over" that should've made Porter a star. Over the course of nearly ten gloriously theatrical minutes, Porter constructs a roller coaster of an arrangement that provides multiple peaks through its first half, suddenly drops down to its knees for an extended funky breakbeat and then builds back up again for an agonized finale reverberating with instrumental bravado. The title aside, this soul opera is no joke.