Isaac Hayes Movement - Vykkii (1975)

Last interview with Isaac Hayes

Photographer and music journalist Rena Kosnett thinks she got one of, if not the, final interview with the singer, songwriter, musician and former "South Park" voice who died Sunday. Hayes, 65, was found dead at home near Memphis. He was due to appear at this year's Sunset Junction festival and spoke to Kosnett last week for the LA Record. Excerpt of the interview:
I got my name as �Black Moses� from Dino Woodward, a pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York [and one-time Stax executive]. He called me Moses, and I said, �Hey, that�s sacrilegious, baby!� But he just kept up with it, so I was like, �OK, I get it.� I finally gave in.

Rolling Stone named �Soul Man� as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Do you think most people realize you and David Porter wrote that song?

Maybe, maybe not. Some people, they don�t connect it�they think it was Sam and Dave, because they made it well known.

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The Sunset Junction festival started as a way to bring the Latino community and gay community together in East L.A. after several instances of violence. Would you consider writing a �Soul Man� type of song for the gay and Latino struggles?

Oh, um, I�m workin� on that one. [laughing] I�ve been working on my new album. I�ll just tell you what, though�this new album that�s coming out, it�s good. It�s probably coming out next year.

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Who should really be called �Black Moses�: you, Harriet Tubman, or Marcus Garvey? There can�t be three, can there?

Kosnett enjoyed the interview and writes at her blog, "I was ecstatic for the week leading up to the interview, and stayed ecstatic for the week following it, so not surprisingly I received 4 voicemails, 6 text messages, and 9 emails from people informing me of this sad news. Isaac was a one-man messianic movement who spoke the gospel of groove and spread the sermon of soul throughout American culture. He served to liberate and advocate American funk and human sexuality the way Timothy Leary articulated acid, the way Hunter S. Thompson obliterated objectivism."

Isaac Hayes - Something

Biography

Isaac Lee Hayes (born Aug 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee - died Aug 10, 2008, in Memphis, Tennessee) was an influential soul singer, songwriter, musician, producer, arranger, and actor. One of the key creative forces behind Memphis’ Stax Records, Hayes began his recording career in 1962, soon playing saxophone for The Bar-Kays. Hayes and writing partner David Porter would pen numerous hits for Stax artists such as Sam & Dave (“Hold On! I’m Comin’”, “Soul Man”) and Carla Thomas (“B-A-B-Y”) during the mid-1960s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hayes became famous as a recording artist in his own right, scoring with critically and commercially successful albums such as Hot Buttered Soul and Black Moses. Hayes is best known today for composing the score to the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft. That film’s “Theme from Shaft” was one of the best-selling singles in Stax Records history, and Hayes became the first African-American to win an Oscar for a non-acting category when “Theme from Shaft” won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Song.

Isaac Hayes may be known to today’s youngest generation as the voice of the character “Chef”, the ladies’ man/school cook, on the animated sitcom South Park from 1997 until his resignation from the show in March 2006. While Hayes’ departure was tagged to a controversial South Park episode on Scientology that had supposedly offended him, Hayes rarely declared anything about the departure in first person.

Isaac Hayes Movement - Disco Connection