Isaac Hayes, American Hero

Here's an idea for you Internet news hounds: take a break from the Obama VP watch tonight and honor the passing of Isaac Hayes by renting a DVD of the incredible documentary Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. You will learn some amazing things about American culture and politics, and you will hear some of the best music ever caught on film. The 2008 presidential campaign will still be here the next morning. I promise.

The life of Isaac Hayes is so iconic, covering such an unlikely juxtaposition of terrains, it is hard to take it all in. At the dawn of the sixties, Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, both white, opened a "recording studio" in a defunct movie theater in south Memphis intending to make country records. When they heard the music being played by the kids who hung around the mostly black neighborhood, they quickly forgot about country music. Isaac Hayes was one of these kids, a teenage orphan living in his car out front. Together with David Porter, Hayes wrote many of the early Stax hits that defined the Memphis Sound. After the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, Stax marketing boss Al Bell pushed the whites (both staff and musicians) at Stax aside and built a Black sound with Black musicians, in tune with the Black Power movement. According to Bell himself, Hayes was chosen as the public face of Black Soul largely because of his shaved head. One day one of the gangsters that Bell had brought in to give Stax more muscle put a gun to Porter's head and told him to stay away from Hayes. Boom. Hayes was the new icon of Black culture.

But what an unlikely icon he was. Bald when everyone else was sporting Afros, a song writer who preferred doing covers when he got a chance to make his own records, a symbol of black male virility who brought his grandmother as his date the night he won the first Oscar ever awarded to an African American. The songs he chose to cover were often by, of all people, Burt Bacharach. When one of the Stax gangsters first suggested to Hayes that he be marketed as "The Black Moses," Hayes wouldn't even want to discuss what he saw as "sacrilege," but soon Black Moses was released, complete with a cover that opened out into the shape of a cross, with Hayes' shaved head and Mike Tyson physique on full display. Gold records were followed by gold jewelry, gold plated cars, and finally bankruptcy for Stax.

More recently Hayes won new notoriety as the voice of the chef on South Park, the only black in a redneck Colorado town, who regales the school kids with songs like "Lick My Salty Chocolate Balls" when the teachers are out of earshot. Somewhere along the line Hayes became a Scientologist, and when South Park ran an episode poking fun at Scientology and Tom Cruise, its most famous convert, Hayes finally found a principle he could not compromise and quit the show.

What an American epic. Everything size LARGE. Including his surviving family of 12 children, 14 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.

Through it all, Hayes somehow remained a remarkably appealing, humble, locally rooted and accessible man of few words, always conveying the sense of being somewhat reluctantly pushed into a spotlight he didn't seek but nevertheless enjoyed. He was deeply involved in charity work in both Memphis and Africa. He recently appeared on a billboard with Steve Cohen, a progressive white Congressman from Memphis in a bitter electoral battle with a black opponent in which the issue of race figured prominently.

If you watch Respect Yourself, you will see so much more than Mr. Hayes. You will see performances by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and Mavis Staples that will leave you uplifted. Really. You can watch marketing whiz Al Bell "invent blackness," in the words of Booker T. Jones (of Booker T and the MGs, the early Stax house band).

The story of Stax is so epic. Consider this: in the early days of Stax, when blacks and whites were playing music together, the old movie theater/recording studio and the nearby Lorraine Motel where the Stax crowd hung out were tiny oases of integration in a violently segregated Memphis. And it was at that very motel, the Stax hangout, that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead.

When reading American history today, 1968 stands out as a sort of inexplicable watershed when everyone and everything went crazy. The civil rights movement fractured with the rise of Black Power. The new left fractured into Weathermen insanity. Police brutality and violence everywhere. What the hell happened?

What can be seen in Respect Yourself, more than in any other movie or book I know, is the breadth of the impact of the King assassination. How coalitions and bridges and dreams just crumbled. How inescapable it all was. How there was nothing anyone could do, the train had simply left the station. The American tragedy.

And now, 40 years later, the passing of Isaac Hayes, the original shaved head, bling blinged, local boy, philanthropist, Black Moses Scientologist and off-color cartoon character, who loved doing covers of Glen Campbell and Burt Bacharach.

Comments

[BroMan]

As a child of the late 60's and early 70's, I remember Hayes' long play albums for the symphonic and classical treatments - something new for popular R&B. Listen to "Hot Buttered Soul" and then "The Issac Hayes Movement" Both classics in my opinion - but of course his popularity peaked with the soundtrack from "Shaft."

[BroMan]

I thought Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Oscar - for Best Supporting Actress, Gone With the Wind. ???

[ShigityShank]

Being a child of the 80's and 90s, I was unaware of Isaac Hayes contributions except for his presence on South Park. Reading your post was very interesting. But I have to point out an error:
"...brought his grandmother as his date the night he won the first Oscar ever awarded to an African American."
I believe that specific honor goes to Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind. A little research shows that Isaa Hayes was the first African American to win in a non-acting category.

[Bob Ostertag - Huffpost Blogger]

Of course you are right! I meant to write that the first African American to win an award for music. Apologies.

[Bitsko]

Thanks a lot for the tip. Readers might also want to check out Mr. Hayes' fantastic organ accompaniment to Otis Redding's version of "Try A Little Tenderness." Righteous. Until I read one of the obituaries, I'd always thought it was Booker T. Can there be a better compliment?

A day or two after his passing, Turner Classic Movies ran a very cool short film about the making of Shaft. The best part has Isaac and his musicians performing some of the score for director Gordon Parks. Cooler cats there never were.

[RobinSeattle]

You neglected to mention his theme song from Shaft, which in itself became a cultural icon that, at least in the larger American imagination, far outshined any of his other accomplishments.

He was a bad mutha.

[Notapathetic]

Brilliant, deep-souled man. He was a creative force for decades and brought much love to this world.

Apparently, HE thought Scientology was okay for himself....but maybe he should have checked with you first.

[kavan]

Lost a bit of respect for him over the scientology thing & him leaving South Park. Up to then he seemed very cool.