"Good God!" writes My Morning Jacket's Jim James in the new liner notes for this musk-and-weed-scented 1969 LP. "Life and love and music and all of humanity reflected in my mind in the same bold eardrum-melting strokes." He's gushing over "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," where Isaac Hayes turns the Jimmy Webb tune into an 18-minute epic, building from endless organ drone to slo-mo orchestral catharsis. The album (reissued with two bonus single edits) was a model of free-form soul and protodisco arranging that made an ace producer-songwriter into a pop star and a sex god. Still a yardstick for soul visionaries everywhere.

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WILL HERMES

(Posted: Aug 18, 2009)