When Isaac Hayes walked on stage to accept his Best Music Score Oscar for Shaft in 1972, draped in dyed-blue ermine and rattling gold chains, it heralded more than the arrival of an innovative film composer. The centre of attention in a room packed with the stuffy tuxes of the Academy voters, Hayesโ€™s success was viewed by the black community as mainstream acceptance of a much wider culture.

He may well have relished his elevation to figurehead status and the affectionate soubriquet โ€œBlack Mosesโ€, and the recognition of his talents undoubtedly opened doors for others to walk through, but for Hayes it was a personal triumph, a seal of approval for his own singular vision of what soul music could be.

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Beginning his career in a string of bands around Memphis, just a few miles south of his birthplace of Covington, Tennessee, Hayes joined the staff of the cityโ€™s legendary Stax Records in 1964, initially as a session musician. He played on dozens of the labelโ€™s releases, one of his most notable early contributions being the powerful Hammond riffs on Otis Reddingโ€™s โ€œTry A Little Tendernessโ€.

In tandem with David Porter, he wrote numerous hits for Sam & Dave (โ€œSoul Manโ€, โ€œHold On! Iโ€™m Cominโ€™โ€) and others in the Stax stable, but it was his own 1969 album, Hot Buttered Soul, that singled him out as a groundbreaking musician of extraordinary depth and invention. The subtle under-played instrumentation and the extended whispered raps of his intros astonished listeners, not least on an 18-minute version of Jimmy Webbโ€™s โ€œBy The Time I Get To Phoenixโ€.

The high life afforded him after Shaft also proved to be a curse, however, and within five years he was filing for bankruptcy, surrendering his Tennessee mansion and gold-plated limousine to the taxman. He continued to make records throughout the 1970s and 1980 but with less fanfare, although his profile received intermittent boosts when hip-hop stars like Public Enemy sampled his back catalogue.

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Hayes welcomed good-natured send-ups of his image in spoof movies like 1988โ€™s Iโ€™m Gonna Git You Sucka!, and worked steadily as an actor in small TV and film roles, as well becoming a radio DJ. In recent years he found himself a new fanbase as the voice of Chef in the much-loved and controversial South Park, even scoring a UK Number One hit with a song from the series, โ€œChocolate Salty Ballsโ€, but he quit the show in protest at the makersโ€™ lampooning of Scientology, the faith heโ€™d embraced years before.

Family members found Hayes collapsed by a treadmill in his home gym in Memphis on Sunday afternoon (August 10), just days before his 66th birthday.

TERRY STAUNTON

Pic credit: PA Photos