Hayes, who died Sunday at his home near Memphis, 10 days short of his 66th birthday, was one of soul music's top songwriters in the '60s, a groundbreaking R&B icon in the '70s and a much-loved TV star in recent years.
With his shaved head, bearded face and resonant baritone, he certainly looked and sounded the part of his self-declared role as Black Moses. At a time when soul acts typically sported sharp suits, Hayes wore his sex appeal on bulging biceps exposed by a chain-vest.
His innovations in orchestration and storytelling would inspire accomplished contemporaries such as Norman Whitfield, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield — and point the way to the disco and rap movements that would follow. In recent years, you could hear his influence in the productions of Dr. Dre and in the music of fellow pianist/songwriter Alicia Keys.
After releasing a few singles in such guises as Sir Isaac & The Doo-Dads, the Covington, Tenn., native found a home at Memphis' Stax Records in the early '60s, playing keyboards at recording sessions as a replacement for college-bound Booker T. Jones (of Booker T & The MG's fame), according to Stax guitarist/writer/producer/MG's mainstay Steve Cropper. "I hired not only Booker T. Jones but Isaac Hayes — and I'll stand by that to my grave," Cropper told USA TODAY in 2007, during a Stax Records event.
Soon Hayes became a key writer/producer in tandem with partner David Porter. Their top act was the duo Sam & Dave, for whom Hayes and Porter wrote such classics as Hold On, I'm Coming; Soul Man; I Thank You; Wrap It Up; You Don't Know Like I Know and When Something Is Wrong With My Baby. Hayes and Porter worked together and separately with other Stax artists including Johnnie Taylor, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Booker T & The MG's and The Emotions, and helped establish the small company as Motown's chief rival in the '60s soul sweepstakes.
Making a solo mark
Reigniting his dreams of solo stardom, Hayes recorded a solo album in 1967, Presenting Isaac Hayes, but it didn't chart. He roared to No. 1 two years later, after Stax lost Otis Redding in a 1967 plane crash and its catalog and Sam & Dave to Atlantic Records. Hayes' second album, 1969's Hot Buttered Soul, spent 10 weeks atop the R&B album chart.
A second golden era for the label ensued, largely thanks to Hayes, who scored six straight R&B chart-topping albums from '69 to '73. The Black Moses (as he became known, after the title of a 1971 album) revolutionized R&B with ornately orchestrated remakes of pop standards such as Walk on By and By the Time I Get to Phoenix featuring lengthy spoken passages, or Ike's Raps, which were distinguished by roman numerals. By the time he got through deconstructing an original melody and making the song his own, it was hard to simply call it a cover song.
Influence looms large
Hayes' tunes influenced the birth of both disco and rap, and Barry White, among others, took his template into more erotic territory and became a superstar.
Hayes' own greatest superstar vehicle was a hard-boiled 1971 private-eye film called Shaft, in which he appeared as a bartender and, more crucially, wrote the theme song, an unforgettable wah-wah-guitar-laden funk instrumental punctuated by vivid lyrical descriptions of the titular "sex machine to all the chicks."
Theme From Shaft won an Oscar and a Grammy, was Hayes' only No. 1 single and led to further soundtrack commissions for film and TV (Truck Turner, The Men).
Beset by financial problems, Stax folded in the mid-'70s, and Hayes' career never equaled past heights, although he enjoyed eight more top 20 R&B albums. He co-wrote the 1979 Dionne Warwick hit Deja Vu, recorded duet albums with Warwick and Millie Jackson, and watched several of his compositions become hits for a new generation via covers by the Fabulous Thunderbirds, ZZ Top and the Blues Brothers.
Fame returns with Chef
He continued to release albums and act, appearing in TV series such as Miami Vice, The A-Team and The Rockford Files. But his return to stardom came in the unlikely animated form of South Park's Chef. Voiced in Hayes' characteristic suggestive drawl, the elementary school cook served up sound advice, double entendres and tasty musical concoctions such as Chocolate Salty Balls (a No. 1 British hit in 1998). He became one of the Comedy Central hit's most popular stars from 1997 until 2006, even publishing a book in 2000 called Cooking With Heart and Soul.
The return to stardom bemused Hayes, who told USA TODAY in 1999, "You work all your life, struggle for artistic excellence, and then some wack cartoon happens and you're hotter than you've ever been."
He left South Park in 2006 for, among other things, the show's lampooning of Scientology, a faith Hayes had espoused since the mid-'90s. (He and hip-hop star Doug E. Fresh collaborated on an album called The Joy of Creation — The Golden Era Musicians and Friends Play L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder.) But Hayes also complained of insufficient pay and had suffered a stroke earlier in the year.
After his South Park stint, little was heard from Hayes, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. He participated in a 2007 concert in Memphis celebrating 50 Years of Stax and was planning an album for the reborn label. He had also completed an appearance as himself in the upcoming film Soul Men, co-starring Bernie Mac, who died Saturday.
He may have been relatively quiet in recent years, but this soul man's muscular grooves will reverberate for years to come.
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