Walk On By

I KNOW you remember this song, right? You have to, I mean this is a classic. The original Walk On By was recorded by Dionne Warwick, a nice song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David about a chance meeting after a break up. I'm pretty certain though that Burt and Hal never anticipated their little song sounding so funky. That was until Isaac Hayes got a hold of it.

The intro is a hard beat and strings but that suddenly morphs into musical muscle. A beat and a severe bass line carries you into the first verse. Isaac smoothly croons the lyrics with angelic backing vocals and damn if he doesn't do this song justice. In my opinion, he does it better than Dionne. I know a lot of people will scream how that's sacrilegious but I could give less than a damn. Isaac made this song his own, and he made it funky.

Walk On By was recorded in 1969, it was the first song on Isaac's second studio album, the seminal Hot Buttered Soul, a bar raising album for the soul music genre. No one had ever heard the stuff Ike put down on that record before, and everyone has been copying him ever since. Enjoy!