Past Talent

Issac Hayes

In 2003, one year after his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and a celebrated move back home to Memphis, the public persona of Isaac Hayes is surging forward with a momentum usually associated with teen popstars and visiting royalty. In fact, Hayes is resident royalty for more than a decade, a coronated King of the Ghana in western Africa. Instead of a palace, he built an educational facility through his foundation. He is most certainly the only King on earth with an Oscar, Grammy awards, #1 gold records, his voice on an animated tv series, a radio show, two restaurants, a best-selling cookbook, and top secret barbecue sauces.

Isaac Hayes was born in the rural poverty of a sharecropper’s family on August 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee. Orphaned in infancy, he and his sister were raised by their maternal grandparents.

When Hayes was 11, his grandfather died. “That’s when we really fell on hard times,” Hayes remembers, “when I started picking cotton.” Ironically, his stately home today in East Memphis looks out on those same fields where cotton grew for nearly two centuries.

To an adolescent, the poverty was stifling, believing he wasn’t dressed well enough to attract the girls, Hayes secretly dropped out of High School. After six weeks, a delegation of teachers arrived at the house and told his grandmother the news. They said, ‘This young man has too much to offer, we cannot afford to lose him.’” The teachers gathered their hand-me-down clothes for Hayes, who resolved to stick it out and get his diploma. The experience left an indelible mark on him for life, and Hayes’ dedication to literacy, education and teaching initiatives is an outgrowth of what those teachers did for him.

Hayes sang in church since age five. He was persuaded by his high school counselor to enter a talent show, singing. “When I finished, the house was on its feet, man, and I was a hit.” So I started pursuing music big time.”

Hayes finally graduated at age 21. It was the year after the first releases began to trickle out of a new label called Stax Records.

“Jim Stewart, the proprietor of Stax said, “Booker T is off in Indiana U., (from Booker T & the MG’s) and I need a keyboard player so you want the job?’ ‘Yeaaa!’ I jumped at it.” His first paid sessions were with Otis Redding, and Hayes was soon a ubiquitous presence at Stax. Not long after, singer and lyricist David Porter suggested to Hayes that they collaborate as songwriters.
As writers, arrangers and producers, the Hayes-Porter duo became Stax’s hottest commodity.

He emerged in the with the landmark Hot Buttered Soul, and the career of Isaac Hayes would never be the same again. The LP was uniquely composed of four arrangements, framed by the opening 12-minute version of “Walk On By” and the closing 18-minute take on “By the Time I Get To Phoenix.” Both were edited into a double-A sided single, and both sides became top 40/R&B crossover hits. #1 on the R&B chart for 10 weeks, the LP stayed on the Pop chart for an amazing 81 weeks. It forced the music industry, for the first time, to conceive of Soul music as an album art form.

The arrival of the Shaft movie, was a career-defining event. Shaft was the first album in history by a solo black artist to hit #1 on both the Pop and R&B chart. At the Academy Awards, Hayes became the first African-American composer to win the Oscar for Best Musical Score.

From the lessons he learned at his grandmother’s side, to the wisdom that only a true king possesses, Isaac Hayes has earned his position as one of the most influential – and productive – figures in African-American culture today.