Isaac Hayes in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, 1981
I was very glad to begin with to have seen Isaac Hayes perform at the inaugural “Celebrate Brooklyn!’ concert in Prospect Park this past June, and now I’m even more glad, for a sad reason, that being we won’t have the opportunity to see him play again.
What an exemplary, and exemplarily American, career he had. I can’t think of an artist who made such distinct impressions in four rather disparate but strangely mingled registers. First, as an in-house songwriter and producer for Stax, the scrappy, southern-fried counterpart to Motown, where he and David Porter were the architects of such classics as “Soul Man” and “Hold On I’m Coming.” Then as a molasses-voiced, orchestra-leading solo artist, the chain-bedecked “Black Moses,” creator of Hot Buttered Soul aka Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By—stretched-out, jazz-inflected LP-side-long versions of the likes of “Walk On By” that got a little spacey but never quite psychedelic. Then adopting that style to the sometimes terse requirements of the movie soundtrack, as with the theme to you know what, and shortly thereafter finding himself a subject for the camera. Great actor? Um, no. But he had a canny way of relaxing into a role, whether villainous or heroic, that always made him convincing. After which he became the very best, most untouchable, sender-up of…Isaac Hayes, in the exploitation spoof I’m Gonna Get You Sucker or voicing Chef on South Park.
A bad mutha, for sure.
UPDATE: The always-sharp Joseph Failla reminds us about a couple things:
The opening moments of Shaft signal one of the greatest intros a new character ever made on screen. As Richard Roundtree, walks against the oncoming Times Square traffic, Isaac Hayes’ famed, sensational score immediately tells us everything we need to know about private eye, John Shaft. Just like the James Bond theme starts pulses racing, the Shaft score led me to believe I was watching a cool urban 70’s version of Bond himself. So much so, when the blaxploitative Live and Let Die turned up later, it seemed more of a rip-off than anything else.
I remember watching Hayes perform “Theme From Shaft” on that year’s Oscar awards show. The production number Hayes and company devised was so overloaded with smoke, moving set pieces, Soul Train like costumes and wildly gyrating dancing girls, I can only imagine what the older, more conventional members of the Academy must have been thinking.
There’s also a double feature CD soundtrack available of Hayes’ work for Truck Turner and Three Tough Guys. Beyond the familiar Shaft, these scores are worth searching out too.
When I interviewed Hayes a few years back, I asked him, “What’s it like to wake up in the morning and realize that you’re Isaac Hayes?” His reply:
“I’m just now really getting it. The world’s gone retro. It’s like a rebirth. People everywhere I go say, ‘Wow, Isaac Hayes, wow.’ But I just got married to my fourth wife about six months ago, and she didn’t know who I was when I first met her. She’s from Africa. And it’s a revelation to her and a revelation to me too, the way they still remember. I’m revered now. Is it my age? All the things I’ve done? I never think about all the things I’ve done until moments like this, talking to you. I’m moving so much. I’ve learned just to keep working. Learned it from my grandmother. When I used to pick cotton in the fields as a little kid, I was always looking back to see if I got cotton in my sack, and she said, ‘Stop! Don’t look back. Just keep picking, you’ll find out.’ So I was picking, picking, picking, and then it felt like someone was standing on my sack. I looked back. My sack is full! I always keep my head down, working, doing things, moving forward. That’s what I’ve done all my life. Then you stop and realize what you’ve done. ‘Damn, I did that!’ I don’t sit back and count up what I’ve done. There’s just always something else to do. There’s always a challenge ahead. I’ve faced those challenges and hit ’em, you know?”
He was the King of New York. He was A‑No. 1.
His appearance in Craig Brewer’s hip-hop crowd-pleaser Hustle & Flow was pure perfection. Brewer says he described the character to Hayes as, “Truck Turner, retired.” That’s all he needed to hear.
“Walk On By” was used beautifully at the conclusion of The Hughes Brothers’ Dead Presidents.
Also, Spike Lee used Haayes in a teasingly effective scene in Summer of Sam.
Truck Turner is actually a pretty good movie. My friends and I used to load up on blaxploitation and kung fu movies in high school, and I remember that one holding us in its grip with jarring editing, terse action scenes, cheesy suspense, wink-wink humor.… and, of course, an unimpeachable soundtrack.