Isaac Hayes, Dead at 65
 

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...logo153x23.gif



Isaac Hayes, Singer-Songwriter Who Defined ’70s Soul,
Is Dead at 65


By BEN SISARIO
Published: August 10, 2008


Isaac Hayes, the singer and songwriter whose luxurious, strutting funk arrangements in songs like “Theme From ‘Shaft’ ” defined the glories and excesses of soul music in the early 1970s, died on Sunday in East Memphis, Tenn. He was 65.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...hayes1.650.jpg
G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

Isaac Hayes performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
as an inductee in 2002.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said that Mr. Hayes’s wife, Adjowa, found him collapsed near a treadmill at his home in Cordova, an eastern suburb of Memphis, and he was pronounced dead an hour later. The cause of death was not known.

With his lascivious bass-baritone and dandy wardrobe, Mr. Hayes developed a musical persona that was analogous to the hyper-masculine, street-savvy characters of the so-called blaxploitation films of the era. In his theme song to Gordon Parks’s “Shaft” from 1971, the title character is summed up in a line that has become a classic of kitsch:

“Who’s a black private dick/Who’s a sex machine to yall the chicks?”

(Furthermore: “He’s a complicated man/But no one understands him but his woman.”)

The “Shaft” theme won an Academy Award and has become one of his best-known songs. But Mr. Hayes’s career stretched far beyond soundtracks. For much of the 1960s and into the ’70s he was one of the principal songwriters and performers for Stax Records, the trailblazing Memphis R&B label, and in the 1990s he revived his career by providing the voice for the amorous and wise Chef on the cable television show “South Park.”

Isaac Hayes was born Aug. 20, 1942, in a tin shack in rural Covington, Tenn., to a mother who died early and a father who left home. He was largely raised by his grandparents, and worked in cotton fields while going to school. He began playing in local bands, and by early 1964, when he was 21, he was working as a backup musician for Stax. His first session was with Otis Redding.

Soon he began writing songs with David Porter, and their music — like “Soul Man” and Hold On, I’m Comin’” for Sam and Dave, and “B-A-B-Y” for Carla Thomas — came to embody the Stax aesthetic. It was tight, catchy pop, but full of sweat and grit, a proudly unpolished Southern alternative to Motown.

By the late 1960s Mr. Hayes was stepping out as a solo artist, and his reputation grew as much for his music as for his dress. The cover of his 1969 album, “Hot Buttered Soul,” pictured him in customary style: shaved head, dark shades, gold chains, bare chest. The album was similarly eccentric, consisting of just four songs, including lengthy, elaborate versions of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Walk on By” and Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” It also included spoken segments that he called raps, and the album became one of his biggest hits, reaching No. 8.

When he was approached to create the score to “Shaft,” one of the first all-black films by a major studio, Mr. Hayes said he also wanted the lead role. The part went to Richard Roundtree, but Mr. Hayes recorded the music anyway. It was done in four days with several members of the Bar-Kays, one of the house bands at Stax.

With a cymbal pattern borrowed from Mr. Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness,” which Mr. Hayes had arranged, the song layered funk guitars, horns, woodwinds and strings, prefiguring disco. It became a No. 1 hit.

In 1971 he followed up the “Shaft” soundtrack with “Black Moses,” a double album that was another ambitious expansion of the vocabulary of soul music. In its original issue, the cover folded out to reveal a portrait of Mr. Hayes in crucifix form.

In the mid-’70s Mr. Hayes’s finances collapsed and his music turned explicitly to disco, a career dead end. Through the 1970s and into the ’90s he acted in several films, including “Escape From New York” in 1981 and “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” in 1988. His music from this era sold poorly, but his career revived in 1997 when he began playing Chef on “South Park.” A Scientologist, he quit the show in 2006, saying that he had been offended by an episode that ridiculed Tom Cruise and other prominent Scientologists.

He had health problems in recent years but had continued to tour and work occasionally in film (he had a role in “Soul Men,” a comedy set for release in November and starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac, the comedian who died Saturday).

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Porter, Mr. Hayes’s fellow songwriter, said that his friend was “recuperating from a stroke,” but added that “in the middle of all that he was still trying to have fun” and had even returned to his birthplace in Covington to go fishing.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Hayes is survived by their son, Nana; and 11 other children from three previous marriages.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...logo153x23.gif


Isaac Hayes

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...age_286491.jpg

Alternate Name: Isaac Hayes Jr
Songwriter, Singer, Actor, Arranger, Music producer
Gender: Male
Born: August 20, 1942
Birthplace: Covington, Tennessee
Nationality: American

Full Biography

From All Movie Guide: A major figure in American soul music, Isaac Hayes has also enjoyed a long and memorable career as an actor and film composer; his score for the motion picture Shaft made him the first African-American to win an Academy Award for music, and was one of the first examples of a pop-based film score that developed a life of its own in the marketplace.

Isaac Hayes was born in Covington, TN, on August 20, 1942. Born to a family of sharecroppers, Hayes was raised by his grandparents, and developed an interest in music early in life, joining the church choir at the age of five. By the time he was a teenager, Hayes had also learned how to play piano, organ, and saxophone, but he was forced to drop out of school after the family had moved to Memphis when his grandfather developed a disability. Hayes began performing with a variety of local R&B groups in Memphis, including the Teen Tones, Sir Calvin and His Swinging Cats, and Sir Isaac and the Doo-Dads, as well as working a variety of day jobs; in time, Hayes began attending night school, and received his high school diploma at the age of 21.

In 1962, Hayes cut his first record for a local label, and in 1964 he'd worked his way up to playing keyboards with the house band at Stax Records, just then establishing themselves as one of the South's premier soul music labels. At Stax, Hayes began writing songs with David Porter, and together they penned a long string of hits for Sam and Dave, including "Soul Man," "Hold On, I'm Coming," and "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby," as well as hits for Johnny Taylor and Carla Thomas. Having established himself as a songwriter, Hayes began to step into the spotlight as a recording artist in 1967 with his first solo album, Presenting Isaac Hayes. While the album was reasonably well received, it was Hayes' second effort, Hot Buttered Soul, that established him as a unique talent in soul music, with its lush, lengthy, and languidly funky interpretations of such songs as "Walk On By" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (the latter clocking in at an epic 18 minutes). Several more successful albums followed, and in 1970, Hayes was approached to write his first film score by, of all people, Norman Mailer; Mailer went through a brief fling as an experimental filmmaker, and he hired Hayes to provide music for his third cinema verite feature, Maidstone.

In 1971, Hayes would write his second film score, which would make a much greater impact; Shaft, directed by famed photojournalist Gordon Parks, was a gritty tale of a tough private eye squaring off against both the cops and the mob in New York City, but with a primarily African-American cast, an unusual thing in 1971, and Hayes' score, which blended streetwise grooves with a brassy orchestral backing, became an instant sensation. Shaft's soundtrack album, as well as the single "Theme From Shaft," were major chart successes, and Hayes won an Academy Award for Best Musical Score. However, while Hayes was certainly proud of his achievements, at one point he'd displayed an interest in playing the lead in Shaft as well as writing the music, and after displaying an estimable amount of screen charisma in several concert films (including Wattstax and Save the Children), he was cast alongside Fred Williamson and Lino Ventura in the Italian blaxploitation-style drama Uomini Duri (released in America as Three Tough Guys); Hayes also wrote music for the film. Later that same year, Hayes scored a solo starring role in Truck Turner, but just as his acting career began taking hold, the bottom began to fall out of the blaxploitation market, and Hayes went back to making music, not scoring another film role until Escape From New York in 1981.

In the mid-'80s, Hayes returned to acting, and appeared in no fewer than 25 theatrical and television features between 1986 and 1996; most were low-budget genre fare, but several more notable films appeared on his resumé, including the blaxploitation parody/tribute I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!, Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Mario Van Peebles' African-American Western Posse, and Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored, a evocative look at life in a small Southern town in the 1940s. Hayes' acting career got an unexpected boost in 1997, when he was asked to provide the voice of Chef on the animated television series South Park; originally intended to appear in one episode, Chef went over so well that he became a recurring character on the series. Since then, Hayes has landed a number of higher-profile film roles, including Blues Brothers 2000, Reindeer Games, and of course the 2000 remake of Shaft. When not busy with acting projects, Hayes continues to play concerts and record new material; he's also a literacy activist, a supporter of children's charities around the world, and operates a pair of successful restaurants in Chicago and Memphis.

~ Mark Deming ~ All Movie Guide

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Does anyone happen to know if he was diabetic?

^ SM, Cheff died long before Isaac (thank D14n3tic5 for that).

I still feel bad for the man dying, but I feel kind of weird when they reference him and his connection to SP w/o saying anythnig about their...um...breakup.

Bernie then Issac though, in the same weekend.

Major Bummer!

RIP, I Never Can Say Goodbye.

Who can forget his Chocolate Salty Balls?

Ninja...I knew that (i have the ep where he is killed for wanting to molest children-too funny)http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.png
But if you read around about the breakup, It seems he really understood where Tray and Matt
were coming from, it was the church of S that made him leave.
It was also rumored he would be back (as mecha chief)http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...es/biggrin.png
None the less he WAS the voice of Chief- and I
was just paying homage to that fact.

NP, it just reminds me of the problem and the.....people....that made him leave.

I think he was one of the funniest characters (being noe of the most "normal" in an insane rural town)

Two very famous people gone in a single weekend!!

Issac, in a way, was like a mentor to some of today's artists and musicians. He and Bernie will be missed by all.

Issac also did a special on the Food Network where he and Ossie Davis narrated "A Taste of Harlem", tracing the area's roots, its rise from rags to riches and it's famous restaurants known for glorious and luscious soul food and still-popular nightclubs. So glad that I recorded it!!

But composing and producing the soundtrack for the first Shaft film is what he will always be most famous for!

There's apic of him in my avatar in rememberence of him. Sadly, he's gone, but he won't be forgotten because like Elvis Presley & James Brown before him, his music and legacy will live on forever! We'll miss you dearly, Bernie and Issac!!http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...lies/frown.png