"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 cathar...

On deluxe cd packaging that reproduces the original cross–shape LP jacket, soul superstar Isaac Hayes personifies the title of his 1971 opus, with robe–clad arms outstretched. Inside, a brokenhearted man mourns a collapsed marriage across two discs that seem to spin in slow motion as Hayes flexes masculine strength through vulnerability. His radically extended arrangements rewrite pop...