Along with having an iconic horn section hook that kicks off the song, Sam & Dave’s iconic “Hold On, I’m Comin’” has a really great backstory. Written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter who ran the southern soul music powerhouse Stack Records in the 60’s , the song was born out of a enthusiastic yell from a bathroom. But although the song title may suggest otherwise, it wasn’t that kind of yell. Get your mind out of the gutter you sicko.
As the story goes Hayes and Porter were in the middle of a writing session when Porter excused himself to go to the bathroom. This being 1966 they didn’t have immediate access to a ton of tools at their disposal to create reverb and echo on their recordings, so the studio ingeniously set up a a speaker that fed from the studio into the tile-walled bathroom that was a live feed of the music coming out of the recording studio, slapped a microphone in that same bathroom, and fed that microphone back into their eight track. In other words, the backroom was mic’d up while Porter was in the middle of doing his business. Hayes was growing a bit exasperated at how long he was taking and yelled at him to hurry up, which Porter then replied “Hold on I’m coming”. They both immediately understood both the double entendre of the line as well as the power in that simple phrase, completed writing the song in a couple of hours, and gave it to Sam & Dave to record.
The rest is history– alongside the iconic “Soul Man” off their 1967 album Soul Men, “Hold On, I’m Comin’” helped send Sam & Dave to immense commercial popularity, eventually earning them inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, Memphis Music Hall of Fame, and the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame.
Standout Songs: “Hold On, I’m Comin’”, “Ease Me”, “Just Me”
Matthew. 