Late Isaac Hayes to receive Lifetime Achievement Grammy
Stax Records icon, the late Isaac Hayes leads a group of artists who will receive Lifetime Achievement Grammy awards.
On Thursday, the Recording Academy announced its annual Special Merit Awards recipients. In addition to Hayes, punk pioneer Iggy Pop, singer-songwriter great John Prine, influential rap group Public Enemy, late gospel/rock and roll trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, R&B singer Roberta Flack and horn-fueled pop hitmakers Chicago will also receive lifetime achievement awards.
Composer Philip Glass, Grammy broadcast veteran Ken Ehrlich and A&R man Frank Walker will be honored with Trustees Awards, while audio engineer/ designer George Augspurger will receive the Technical Grammy honor.
The Grammy Special Merit Awards ceremony will be held April 18 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California.
Hayes — who won three Grammys in his lifetime — will join several other Stax associated figures who’ve earned Lifetime Achievement and Trustees Awards honors, including label co-founder Estelle Axton, company head Al Bell, and artists including Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and the Memphis Horns.
A songwriter, producer, performer,
actor, author, activist, philanthropist and business owner, Hayes was an R&B renaissance man. The son of sharecroppers, he was born in Covington, Tennessee, in 1942. Orphaned as a child, Hayes and his sister were raised by their maternal grandparents.
A musical prodigy from childhood — he began singing in church at 5 and soon began learning the first of many instruments — Hayes' tastes were wide-ranging, embracing both the black and rural roots music around him, as well as the sophisticated songwriting of composers like George Gershwin and Cole Porter.
After dropping out of Manassas High School, Hayes became a presence on the Memphis club scene in the early '60s, leading a series of bands before gravitating to the fledgling Stax Records label as a session pianist.
There he began a historic songwriting partnership with David Porter. They would write more than 200 songs together. including some of the seminal contributions to the soul music canon such as hits for Carla Thomas ("B-A-BY"), Johnnie Taylor ("I Had A Dream"), the Soul Children ("The Sweeter He Is"), and most notably Sam & Dave ("Hold On, I'm Coming," "Soul Man").
As his songwriting and production achievements continued to grow, Hayes made a rather inauspicious debut as a solo artist for Stax with 1967's "Presenting Isaac Hayes." It would be Hayes' follow-up LP, however, 1969's "Hot Buttered Soul," that would take him from behind-the-scenes player to front-andcenter star.
An adventurous and experimental conceptual platter, "Hot Buttered Soul" shattered traditional R&B conventions. Comprised of four lengthy songs — including moody, epic reinterpretations of pop hits like "Walk On By" and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" — the tracks were transformed by complex arrangements and the sheer power of Hayes' rumbling baritone.
But it was Hayes' work on the soundtrack to director Gordon Parks' pioneering 1971 "blaxploitation" film "Shaft" that would forever cement his place in history. The film's title track — an irresistible mingling of wah-wah guitar, orchestral flourishes and Hayes' protorapping — became a pop sensation, topping the Billboard charts. The tune would earn Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
By the early '70s Hayes had become both a cottage industry and the catalyst for Stax's shift toward a new kind of black consciousness. He would continue to evolve his music with albums like the Grammy-winning "Black Moses" and a soundtrack for the film "Truck Turner" (in which he also starred in the title role). He also served as the headliner for the historic 1972 Wattstax concert in Los Angeles.
Despite his numerous successes, the rapid demise of Stax in the mid-'70s coupled with management woes forced Hayes to declare bankruptcy in 1976. He would mount a comeback later in the decade with a series of hit songs and albums for the Polydor label.
Hayes second career, as an actor, blossomed in the '80s and '90s. He appeared on a number of television shows ("The Rockford Files," "Miami Vice") and films ("Escape From New York," "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka") and became familiar to a whole new generation with his role as Chef in the popular animated series "South Park."
Hayes died in 2008 at the age of 65.