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Lugar y fecha de nacimiento. Isaac Hayes (1942 - ) Singer, songwriter, actor, arranger, music producer Born: August 20, 1942, Covington, TN America had never seen anything like it before. A big, bald, broad-shouldered black man standing in front of the world on the Academy Awards broadcast of 1972 wearing seemingly little else than a thick gold chain around his very buffed and very coal-hued chest, and singing a song that combined lushness with sexual danger in a way that could only be described as cool. Black Moses and signified that no Afro-American male was ever going to feel self-conscious about his manhood again. Hayes had not started out to be the headliner. He was an itinerant, young saxophonist in Memphis when he was hired to play with Floyd Newman. Soon, he was not only co-writing with Newman, but asked to join the staff at Stax Records, the Motown competitor some purists say did the better music. It was at Stax that Hayes and David Porter wrote numerous hits for Sam and Dave, including Soul Man and When Something is Wrong With My Baby. After Hayes shaved his head in the late 1960s, he started performing more and released Hot Buttered Soul, an album remembered for its 19-minute rendition of By the Time I Get to Phoenix, an almost unheard of track length at the time. A little more than a year after the album's release had made Hayes interesting, if not yet a star, he was asked to write the music and lyrics for SHAFT (1971), a ground-breaking detective movie with Richard Roundtree, a black actor, in the lead. The resulting theme, which included the breakthrough use of a wah-wah pedal later borrowed by Barry White, won the 1972 Academy Award and Hayes was suddenly on album covers, bald and in animal furs that looked as if they had just been ripped off the beast, or in garb suitable for the man calling himself, and his hit album, Black Moses. He was also a favorite on TV variety shows, somehow blending his burning sexuality with the likes of the Osmond Family and Jack Benny, among others. It was not long before Hayes was asked to perform in front of the cameras as well. Hayes was featured in a couple of documentaries (WATTSTAX, SAVE THE CHILDREN, and THE BLACK MOSES OF SOUL, all 1973) before being cast in the lead or second lead in several blaxploitation movies of the period, including TRUCK TURNER (1974). By the end of the '70s, beset with personal woes, Hayes seemed to have disappeared, his concerts rare, his albums even rarer. His brute force was arguably the best thing about John Carpenter's FUGA DE NUEVA YORK (1981), but then he drifted away again. The Hayes who returned in front of the cameras for the blaxploitation spoof I'M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA (1988), was middle-aged and softer, and by IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU (1994), Hayes had transformed himself again, this time into an almost fatherly or avuncular figure, as he narrated and appeared as an aptly-named Angel in the romantic comedy. In 1995, he released Branded, a vocal album, and Raw and Refined, an instrumental, yet he said he would perform on stage again only when his next album was released. Hayes did appear in a few variety special events and benefits. He appeared as a preacher in Tim Reid's ONCE UPON A TIME … WHEN WE WERE COLORED (1996) and played a supporting role in the big screen version of FLIPPER (1996). Also in 1996, he composed the musical score for ORIGINAL GANGSTAS, a reunion of blaxploitation stars including Fred Williamson, Richard Roundtree and Pam Grier. Nominated for Music - Original Dramatic Score 1971: SHAFT Music - Song (Original to the Picture) 1971: SHAFT — Music & Lyrics
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