Singer, songwriter Isaac Hayes dies at age 65

© JENNIFER GRAYLOCK/AP
Isaac Hayes

Singer, songwriter Isaac Hayes dies at age 65
Aug. 10, 2008, 5:18 PM EST



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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Isaac Hayes, the baldheaded, baritone-voiced soul crooner
who laid the groundwork for disco and whose "Theme From Shaft" won both Academy
and Grammy awards, died Sunday afternoon after he collapsed near a treadmill,
authorities said. He was 65.
Hayes was pronounced dead at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis an hour after
he was found by a family member, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said. The
cause of death was not immediately known.
With his muscular build, shiny head and sunglasses, Hayes cut a striking
figure at a time when most of his contemporaries were sporting Afros. His music,
which came to be known as urban-contemporary, paved the way for disco as well as
romantic crooners like Barry White.
And in his spoken-word introductions and interludes, Hayes was essentially
rapping before there was rap. His career hit another high in 1997 when he became
the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the
animated TV show "South
Park."

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"Isaac Hayes embodies everything that's soul music," Collin Stanback, an
A&R executive at Stax, told The Associated Press on Sunday. "When you think
of soul music you think of Isaac Hayes — the expression ... the sound and the
creativity that goes along with it."
Hayes was about to begin work on a new album for Stax, the soul record label
he helped build to legendary status. And he had recently finished work on a
movie called "Soul Men" in which he played himself, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac, who died on Saturday.
Related: Comedian Bernie Mac passes away at 50
Steve Shular, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said authorities received
a 911 call after Hayes' wife and young son and his wife's cousin returned home
from the grocery store and found him collapsed in a downstairs bedroom. A
sheriff's deputy administered CPR until paramedics arrived.
"The treadmill was running but he was unresponsive lying on the floor,"
Shular said.
The album "Hot Buttered Soul" made Hayes a star in 1969. His shaven
head, gold chains and sunglasses gave him a compelling visual image.
"Hot Buttered Soul" was groundbreaking in several ways: He sang in a "cool"
style unlike the usual histrionics of big-time soul singers. He prefaced the
song with "raps," and the numbers ran longer than three minutes with lush
arrangements.
"Jocks would play it at night," Hayes recalled in a 1999 Associated Press
interview. "They could go to the bathroom, they could get a sandwich, or
whatever."
Next came "Theme From Shaft," a No. 1 hit in 1971 from the film "Shaft" starring Richard Roundtree.
"That was like the shot heard round the world," Hayes said in the 1999
interview.
At the Oscar ceremony in 1972, Hayes performed the song wearing an
eye-popping amount of gold and received a standing ovation. TV Guide later chose
it as No. 18 in its list of television's 25 most memorable moments. He won an
Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The
song and score also won him two Grammys.
"The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my
influence," he said. "And they'll tell you if you ask."
Hayes was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
"I knew nothing about the business, or trends and things like that," he said.
"I think it was a matter of timing. I didn't know what was unfolding."
A self-taught musician, he was hired in 1964 by Stax Records of Memphis as a
backup pianist, working as a session musician for Otis Redding and others. He also played saxophone.
He began writing songs, establishing a songwriting partnership with David
Porter, and in the 1960s they wrote such hits for Sam and Dave as "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man."
All this led to his recording contract.
In 1972, he won another Grammy for his album "Black Moses" and earned a
nickname he reluctantly embraced. Hayes composed film scores for "Tough Guys"
and "Truck Turner" besides "Shaft." He also did the song "Two Cool Guys" on the
"Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" movie soundtrack in 1996.
Additionally, he was the voice of Nickelodeon's "Nick at Nite" and had radio
shows in New York City (1996 to 2002) and then in Memphis.
He was in several movies, including "It Could Happen to You" with Nicolas Cage, "Ninth Street" with Martin Sheen, "Reindeer Games" starring Ben Affleck and the blaxploitation parody "I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka."
In the 1999 interview, Hayes described the "South Park" cook as "a person
that speaks his mind; he's sensitive enough to care for children; he's wise
enough to not be put into the 'wack' category like everybody else in town — and
he l-o-o-o-o-ves the ladies."
But Hayes angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked his
Scientology religion.
"There is a place in this world for satire," he said. "but there is a time
when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs of others
begins."
Co-creator creators Matt Stone responded that Hayes "has no problem — and he's
cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians." A subsequent
episode of the show seemingly killed off the Chef character.
Hayes was born in 1942 in a tin shack in Covington, Tenn., about 40 miles
north of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother
died and his father took off when he was 1 1/2. The family moved to Memphis when
he was 6.
Hayes wanted to be a doctor, but got redirected when he won a talent contest
in ninth grade by singing Nat King Cole's "Looking Back."
He held down various low-paying jobs, including shining shoes on the
legendary Beale Street in Memphis. He also played gigs in rural Southern juke
joints where at times he had to hit the floor because someone began shooting.
Related: Comedian Bernie Mac passes away at 50

August 11, 2008



Isaac Hayes, 65, a Creator of ’70s Soul Style, Dies



By BEN SISARIO






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.
The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said that Mr. Hayes’s wife,
Adjowa, found him collapsed near a treadmill at their 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 flamboyant wardrobe, Mr. Hayes
developed a musical persona that was an embodiment of 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 all 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 raised largely 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 —
numbers 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 dress as for his music. 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 blaxploitation films, 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 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, which turned out to be a career dead end. Through
the 1970s and into the ’90s he acted in several films, including
“Escape From New York” in 1981 and the spoof “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 also had a radio show in New York in the 1990s.
Mr. Hayes 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.
Mr. Hayes had been married three times previously. In addition to
his wife, he is survived by their son, Nana, and 11 other children.


John M. Hubbell contributed reporting from Memphis.

ISAAC HAYES SE BARRE AUSSI !








Décidément, il ne fait pas bon d'être un génie de la "Black Music", comme disent les "branchés". Après le pape de la soul, James Brown, décédé le 25 décembre 2006, une autre légende tire, elle aussi, sa
révérence. Issac
Hayes, ou Nene Katey
Ocansey, son
nom de baptême Africain, 65 ans, un des musiciens Afro-américains les
plus marquants de l'histoire contemporaine, est mort dimanche dans son
domicile à Memphis, dans le Tennessee. Chanteur, compositeur et auteur
de chansons mémorables, il avait remporté un Oscar en 1972 pour la
composition de la musique du film Shaft.
En 2006, Isaac Hayes avait été victime d'une attaque cardiaque et
avait depuis des soucis de santé. Ce grand monument de la musique
mondial, qui a toujours puisé dans son
Africanité pour exprimer tout son génie, aurait eu 66 ans le 20 août. Gone too soon ! ( parti trop tôt en français )



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Honneur & Respect