This is seventeen minutes of sex for the ears. This song came from the powerful early seventies album “Hot Buttered Soul.” It takes nearly nine minutes to set up the song. It sits on a bare snare and bass beat with a single, sustained chord on a Hammond Organ. When he finally starts on this Jimmy Webb classic, it wails. I mean painful, screaming, gut-shot kind of wailing. The trumpet starts low and ends up like a tank about to run over you. Fuck! It is an experience. “Seven times he left that woman/seven times he came back”

By the Time I Get to Phoenix - Isaac Hayes

By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising
She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin'
'Cause I've left that girl so many times before

By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working
She'll prob'ly stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin'
Off the wall that's all

By the time I make Oklahoma she'll be sleepin'
She'll turn softly and call my name out loud
And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
Tho' time and time I try to tell her so
She just didn't know I would really go.