Isaac Hayes |
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Tue. November 29.2005 10:34 AM EST |
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Isaac Hayes' Digable PlanetThe "Shaft" and South Park star looks over three decades of being one bad mother ... by C. Bottomley |
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Isaac Hayes has had more lives than many celebs. During the 1960s, he was one half of Stax's "Double Dynamite" songwriting partnership
Hayes announced his arrival with Hot Buttered Soul (1969), a sprawling magnum opus of overblown arrangements and psychedelic seduction. Throughout the 1970s, boudoirs resounded with the singer's baritone mutter on sheet-rumpling workouts like "Walk On By" and "Joy." In 1972, he became the first African-American musician to win an Oscar, for his sublimely funky title theme from Shaft. Although Hayes' last album was in 1997, he's thrived as an actor, chef, DJ, associate of Alicia Keys and the Wu-tang Clan, and, of course, the voice of South Park's Chef. His music also lives on in innumerable hip-hop samples and the new CD/DVD compilation The Ultimate Isaac Hayes: Can You Dig It? He talked to VH1 about reinventing soul and wearing some of the '70s' dandiest duds. How did you go from being a hit songwriter to an artist in your own right? Well, I was a vocalist first. I sang in blues bands and doo-wop groups and gospel groups. All that stuff. Stax record exec Al Bell said he thought you could be a solo artist was because he saw you once wearing pink pants, lavender socks and white shoes. Were you the best dressed men in Memphis? I just wanted to dress the way that I felt. I used to go to a place called Lansky Brothers on the corner of Beale and Second and have them make all my clothes. I wore everything, man. I wore orange suits, pink suits, purple suits, chartreuse suits, green suits - it didn't matter. After I saw The Pink Panther with those Nehru collars and stuff, I was the only one wearing those in Memphis. You also pioneered the gold chain look. What inspired you to start wearing them? A guy sold me a chain necklace and a chain belt to match. I started wearing that onstage, then I switched to wearing tights. I thought if a belly dancer can wear them, then I can wear them too. Eventually a guy named Charles Rubin said, "I'm going to make you a chain vest." I realized, Wait a minute, I'm wearing chains! Chains once represented slavery to a black man in this country. I said, I'm going to turn it around -- these chains are a symbol of strength and power. So I kept wearing them. There's a startling progression between Presenting Isaac Hayes and Hot Buttered Soul. Al Bell approached during the winter of '68 and said, "We got to get some sales here, so I'm going to put an album out [by] everybody on the label." I said, "One thing, Al. I want to do it the way I want to do it." He said, "Ike, you got carte blanche." I got to work on doing my album, which turned out to be Hot Buttered Soul. Because there was 26 other LPs released, I didn't feel like I had to have a hit. I could artistically do what I wanted to do. In fact, Al and I wrote a song called "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" which was a big long word just to tease. It didn't mean a thing. It only meant that I had a roll in the hay and I wanted an encore. What was the reaction when you first played Hot Buttered Soul for people? I pulled two guys in the conference room: Joe Galkin, who was considered the granddad of all promotion and Jack "The Rapper" Gibson. They sat down and listened. They was so still, I said, "These guys ain't movin'!." When the thing ended, they said, "Wow, Ike. I don't know about the radio airplay, but it's a masterpiece." So how did Hot Buttered Soul get the push it needed? A DJ out in Detroit put it on the air and played it in its entirety on his late night show. It caught on something awful. People were breaking into record shops and all they stole was Hot Buttered Soul! Detroit became a big support for me. When I did my first gig in Detroit I said to the DJ who MC'd the show, "Do you think they'll like me?" He said, "This thing was sold out two weeks in advance! What do you think?" How did you go down? The mic wasn't right on the organ so I said, "Adjust this mic guys." I started talking to the audience. My nervousness subsided. I was dressed weird. I had on a terrycloth flop hat and some moccasins, like a hippie. My head was sweating, so I took my cap off to wipe my head. When I took my cap off, women screamed! I made a little note of that. Then I was talking to them and everything and I got at ease with the audience. I kept it in my act -- I'd communicate with them and get them involved. Even "Shaft" was radical in its own way. It's nearly half over before your vocals come in. Al Bell spoiled me when he told me I could record however I wanted to, and I had platinum albums back to back. After Hot Buttered Soul was The Movement, then To Be Continued, and then Black Moses, they just kept coming. I did the same thing with the score because the picture dictated to me what to do with the music. So when I changed the rhythm, when I went da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dum-dum then dum-dum-dum, "Who's the black private dick," that's when I started the vocals. It just all fit. You ended up covering a lot of songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, like "The Look of Love" and "Walk On By." What was it about their work that you found appealing? Y'see, I was a Dionne Warwick fan first. And then I fell in love with that music. There was "The Look Of Love," "Walk On By," "Alfie," all those things those guys wrote. I relied on the fact that a hit song is a hit song. You can chop it up and put it back together, if it's a hit it will still stand. The DVD that comes with the album has footage of you performing at the 1972 Wattstax concert, which was considered the African-American Woodstock. What is your fondest memory of that day? When I went to the L.A. Coliseum, there were 125,000 people, and they sat in the hot sun starting in the late morning through the middle of the day in the heat, then when it started to cool off into the evening, they stayed! And the whole day went without incident. That was the remarkable thing about it. You've had a good run as an actor. What is your favorite of the movies you've been in? Truck Turner from 1974. [Laughs] Truck Turner was kind of raw. I got to blow a lot of guys away and make love to Anazette Chase. And I got a chance to kick Lieutenant Uhura's ass! [Laughs] Sounds like you got a little too close to your part. I did! I had a lot of fun. Jonathan Kaplan, who directed The Firm and The Accused, had just started directing movies and we had a great time. All those chicks man? Oh, I just loved it. We had a lot of freedom in that thing, too. We stuck to the script, but John wasn't a hard-ass if we got creative. If it worked, he let us do it. It was great. Can you remember the first time you heard your music in hip-hop sample? I first heard it in a tune by the Geto Boys called "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me." They took it from a movie I scored called Two Tough Guys. But I was forewarned about it. In 1993, I made a movie called Posse, directed by Mario Van Peebles. Big Daddy Kane, he said "Ike, brace yourself, man. They sampling your stuff." I didn't know what the hell sampling was. "What?" He said, "Just get ready. They comin' at you in a big way." |
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