isaac hayEs

1942–2008

Black Moses text Andria Lisle photography Lynn McAfee/Frank White Photo Agency

Bad news always travels fast. In the case of Isaac Hayes’s death, it was no different. He died on Sunday, August 10, in the mid-afternoon in Memphis, Tennessee. According to his fourth wife, Adjowa, Hayes spent the late morning plucking out new melodies on the piano, then turned on his treadmill for a jog. She and two-year-old Nana Kwadjo, Hayes’s eleventh child and fourth son, left to run errands. When they returned home, Hayes’s sixty-five-year-old body lay beside the still-running treadmill, but Black Moses’s soul had already departed this earthly realm.

Almost immediately, the town buzzed with the news, which radiated from Hayes’s East Memphis home to cell phones belonging to his songwriting partner, David Porter, and his guitarist, wah-wah genius Skip Pitts. Like a cue from a Hollywood drama, storm clouds rolled across the Mississippi River as word traveled from the staff at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, built on the sacred ground of the Stax recording studio, to the switchboard at Ardent Studios, where Hayes had recorded the seminal Hot Buttered Soul. Upon hearing the report, his onetime drummer, Willie Hall, broke down and cried like a baby; a mute Pitts drove to Hayes’s residence, then sat in his car, unable to move.

By the time filmmaker Craig Brewer—who directed Hayes in Hustle & Flow—got the call, which he instantly shared with me, the steamy drizzle had turned into a full-fledged downpour. Local news teams abandoned coverage of the thirty-first anniversary of Elvis Presley’s passing—known to us locals as Death Week—to broadcast period clips of Hayes in his prime, winning the Academy Award for “(Theme from) Shaft,” appearing in gold chains at Wattstax, driving his gold- and furtrimmed Cadillac Eldorado through the streets of the Soulsville neighborhood.

Born in rural Rialto, Tennessee, just outside of Covington, and orphaned soon after, Hayes moved to Memphis with his sister Willette and his grandmother, Rushia Wade, in June 1949, finding shelter in a successive number of dumps that ranged from a one-room apartment located atop a storefront church to a shotgun house with no bathroom. Desperate to contribute to the family budget, Hayes picked cotton, delivered groceries, and shined shoes. In his spare time, he attended classes at Manassas High School—dropping out once, he didn’t finish until well after his twentieth birthday, already married and with a kid on the way. Post-graduation, he toiled at a meat-packing plant, his musical inclinations temporarily on hold.

During his teenage years, Hayes—who was inspired by Sam Cooke—sang with the secular Teen Town Singers and the Teen Tones, as well as the gospel-based Morning Stars. He hung out at American Sound Studios, home to blue-eyed-soul producer Chips Moman, and tried, with doo-woppers the Ambassadors and a blues band called Calvin and the Swing Cats, to get past the door at Stax. Local joints like Curry’s Club Tropicana, where he held his own against musicians twice his age, and the Plantation Inn, where he honed his piano skills with genuine aptitude, buoyed his confidence, and, once Stax session organist Booker T. Jones went off to Indiana University, Hayes found a way in.

The Stax studio, located at 926 E. McLemore Avenue, was Hayes’s college. His first Stax paycheck was for an Otis Redding session recorded in the spring of 1964 and released on the Otis Blue album, which hit the number one spot on Billboard ’s R&B charts. Now a vital member of the Stax fold, Hayes began penning songs with Steve Cropper, Carl Cunningham, and Marvell Thomas. Bolstered by small suc- cesses, he co-authored the MGs’ “Boot-Leg,” and played organ on the session. By 1965, Hayes and Porter were collaborating on their initial efforts for Sam & Dave. With cash from Hayes-and-Porter-penned hits like “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” “Hold On! I’m Comin’,” “You Got Me Hummin’,” “I Thank You,” and “Soul Man” flowing into his bank account, Hayes was buying sacks of groceries, not delivering them.

Hayes proved inexhaustible, working on compositions for the ever-growing roster of Stax artists by day, and laying the groundwork for his solo career by night. In early 1968, after a few flops recorded under monikers like Sir Isaac and the DoDads and the Barracudas, he cut his first solo effort, Presenting Isaac Hayes, which came and went with little fanfare. Then he appropriated Jimmy Webb’s pop song, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” and reinvented it as an eighteen-minute rap included on a second solo album, Hot Buttered Soul, which enthusiastic listeners placed at the top of the pop, R&B, jazz, and easy-listening charts.

Just twenty-seven years old, the mellifluous Hayes had finally entered the inner sanctum, single-handedly saving Stax after surviving the one-two punch of Otis Redding’s death and Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and temporarily superseding even Elvis to become Memphis’s newest megastar. Before the first year of the new decade came to a close, he released two more albums, The Isaac Hayes Movement and …To Be Continued, gained a retinue that included alleged mobster Johnny Baylor, and jettisoned Porter, his former best friend and songwriting partner.

In the 1970s, Hayes transformed himself into an avatar for Black consciousness. Wearing Josephine Baker–inspired banana-leaf skirts and oversized gold chains that pre-dated Mr. T’s look by a good ten years, he metamorphosed into Black Moses, an urban superhero who, like his biblical namesake, sought to deliver his people from bondage. As a founding member of the Black Knights, Hayes promised to be “the burr in the saddle” of White politicians. He galvanized the 112,000-strong crowd at Wattstax. And as the levelheaded voice behind “(Theme from) Shaft,” he won a pair of Grammys and subsequently became the first African American to win a non-acting Academy Award. Of course, he took his grandmother to the Oscar ceremony.

But Hayes also became an emblem of excess. Inspired by Shaft, he spearheaded Stax’s nearly disastrous foray into the movie business, via blaxploitation flicks like Three Tough Guys and Truck Turner. He co-owned a professional basketball team, the Memphis Tams, opened his own recording studio, Hot Buttered Soul, and eschewed his own compositions to release Black Moses, an album of cover tunes.

In November 1973, Stax accountants were astonished to realize that they were shelling out more than $300,000 a year for Hayes’s salary, guard service, secretary, recording costs, car payments, and a house in Beverly Hills. Before the middle of the decade, Hayes was forced into personal bankruptcy brought on by Stax Records’ own financial problems, which cost the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame songwriter royalties from everything he’d written, produced, or recorded at Stax. He endured a humiliating public auction, where greedy Memphians pawed over his lavish wardrobe, his jewelry, and other personal effects. andrew hill chico hamilton TheAlternativeDimensionsofElChicoEP SF001/JS10006 Chico'sstatureinDJcultureislong-standingandprofound.Thisrelease isasamplingoftheChicoHamiltoncontinuum,withrecastingsof/by:Blaze, JoeClaussell,MarkdeClive-Lowe,FertileGround,ChicoHamilton &SoulFeast.STAYCLOSEandHOLDONTIGHTasthisexcursioncontinues andTHECONQUISTADORridesagain!

Embittered, Hayes decamped for New York, then Atlanta, before eventually returning to Memphis. He became a successful disc jockey and actor, and successfully re-launched his musical career. In 1995, Hayes became a Scientologist, following in the footsteps of Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie. He was cast as the voice for the cartoon character Chef on South Park, authored a cookbook, opened a namesake soul-food restaurant, and rekindled his friendship with David Porter. Last year, he announced plans to record a new album for the reinvigorated Stax label.

My Memphis friends—mainly garage-rock musicians, underground rap stars, and record collector geeks—and I collected Hayes sightings like other folks collect frequent-flyer miles or baseball cards. There was Isaac, seen posing outside the Stax Museum with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, or Black Moses, pushing a cart full of organic produce down the aisle at Wild Oats. We recognized Hayes as a legend, and we celebrated his status as an underdog who overcame the odds (twice!), but we also knew him as an everyday Memphian— the epitome of cool, clad in a Clark Kent-ish disguise. Few of us realized that in Ghana, Hayes had been crowned Nene Katey Ocansey I, a bona fide African king. We didn’t know of his dedication to the Save a Million Lives HIV/AIDS Project, or his charity work with African orphans.

Not until Hayes’s funeral, a four-hour “celebration of life” MCed by Stax alumnus William Bell—which featured eulogies from an endless stream of celebrities including Civil Rights leaders Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton; actors and Scientologist practitioners Kelly Preston and Anne Archer; the Human Beatbox Doug E. Fresh; musicians Chick Corea and Kirk Whalum; David Porter and former Stax head Al Bell; and a delegation from Ghana, including Princess Asie Ocansey—did the miraculous arc of his life, from a cottonpicking orphan to Black Moses and, finally, King Nene Katey, really sink in.

“Isaac understood that where you come from and what you represent means a lot more than your little time and space,” Sharpton preached. “His roots ran back from Memphis, through the Euphrates, to Timbuktu. Isaac had ancestors looking down, smiling, saying, ‘No matter what you do, don’t forget who you are.’ Nobody can cut you down if your roots run deep.” .

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