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Isaac Hayes, Singer:
From The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
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Isaac
Hayes is a multi-faceted talent: songwriter,
producer, sideman, solo artist, film scorer, actor,
rapper and deejay. He has been hugely influential on
the rap movement as both a spoken-word pioneer and
larger-than-life persona who s influenced everyone
from Barry White to Puff Daddy. Hayes is best known
for his soundtrack to Shaft, one of the first and
best blaxploitation films, and for the song Theme
from Shaft, a Top Ten hit. But his varied resume
boasts everything from backing up Otis Redding and
writing for Sam and Dave and others at Stax
Records in the Sixties to serving as the voice of
Chef on South Park in the Nineties. At the
peak of his popularity in the early Seventies, Hayes
devised the character Black Moses, based on his
public persona. With his shaved head, dark glasses,
bulging muscles, gold chains, fur coats and serious,
unsmiling demeanor, Hayes came off as both a potent
sex symbol and an icon for African-American pride.
Moreover, according to Jim Stewart, founder
of Stax Records, Isaac Hayes is one of the main
roots of the Memphis Sound.
Raised in and around Memphis, Hayes signed on as
a sessionman at Stax Records in 1964. His first
session was for The Great Otis Redding Sings
Soul Ballads (released on Volt Records, a Stax
subsidiary). He and lyricist David Porter became a
formidable songwriting team at Stax. Hayes and
Porter bonded with the soul duo Sam and Dave,
writing and producing a run of hits that included
Hold On, I m Coming, Soul Man and I Thank You.
They also wrote B-A-B-Y for Carla Thomas and hits
for the Emotions, the Soul Children, Mable John and
Lou Rawls. As a keyboardist and producer, Hayes was
an important element in the Stax/Volt sound. All the
while, he was itching to sing and hearing a
different sound in his head. I wanted to sing pop
music, easy listening, but Memphis was stone R&B,
he told Rolling Stone in 1970.
The origins of Hayes style came following a Stax
Christmas party, when Hayes, bassist Duck Dunn and
drummer Al Jackson, Jr., began playing around in the
studio. They hit on a unique approach, recasting pop
hits in lengthy arrangements featuring spoken
monologues from Hayes and jazzy, orchestrated middle
sections. His first album, Introducing Isaac
Hayes, appeared in 1967 but failed to chart.
Hayes breakthrough came with his second solo album,
Hot Buttered Soul (1969), which
revolutionized soul music by bringing a more silky,
adult sound to it and by interpolating lengthy
pillow-talk monologues, which Hayes called raps.
Hot Buttered Soul contained only four tracks,
and two of them remakes of Dionne Warwick s Walk
on By and Glen Campbell s By the Time I Get to
Phoenix ran twelve and nineteen minutes long,
respectively. Edited versions of both songs made up
a double-sided hit single on the pop and R&B charts
in 1969.
Though Hayes has cracked the Top Forty numerous
times over the years the Oscar-winning Theme from
Shaft, his biggest hit, topped the charts for two
weeks in 1971 his approach was generally more
suited to the album format, where he could stretch
out and set a mood with his soulful, rap-filled
symphonettes. From 1969 to 1975, Hayes released a
string of Top Twenty albums: Hot Buttered Soul
(#8, 1969), The Isaac Hayes Movement (#8,
1970), To Be Continued (#11, 1970), Shaft
(#1, 1971), Black Moses (#10, 1971), Live
at the Sahara Tahoe (#14, 1973), Joy
(#16, 1973) and Chocolate Chip (#18, 1975).
He also appeared in Wattstax, a concert film
and soundtrack spotlighting Stax artists.
In addition to music, Hayes has appeared in a
number of action-adventure and comedy films and
served as the voice of Chef on the animated TV
show South Park. He s also been a morning
deejay at KISS-FM in New York. On a more serious
note, he has been heavily involved in charitable
causes and humanitarian and development efforts in
the African nation of Ghana. |
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