Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was born in 1942 in Covington, Tennessee. His mother died when he was one and a half years old and soon after that, his father deserted the family. So, Isaac was raised by his grandparents. They were all sharecroppers and so Isaac grew up working on the farm.

When he was five, he started singing in church and that led to an interest in music, which molded the rest of his life. By the time he was a teenager, he had taught himself to play the piano, the Hammond organ, the flute and the saxophone. I suspect there was little incentive to finish high school in the late Fifties, so Isaac dropped out before he finished. However, some of his former teachers encouraged him to finish and so he went back and got his diploma at the age of twenty-one.

He got several offers for scholarships to various colleges, but turned them all down because he had to support his family. That he did by working in a meat-packing plant in Memphis by day and singing in clubs at night.

Isaac went to work for Stax Records in Memphis in the early Sixties and teamed up with producer and writer David Porter to write some of the soul classics of the Sixties. He and Porter wrote most of the hits that Sam and Dave had in the Sixties. Remember “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’” which were done by Sam and Dave. Isaac and Porter wrote those songs. He also played on every song that Otis Redding recorded.

By 1968, Isaac was ready to record his own music and put out an album called Presenting Isaac Hayes. It is described as a jazzy, improvised effort that was commercially unsuccessful. In other words, it didn’t sell. His second album, Hot Buttered Soul. which only includes four songs, went to number one on the R&B charts and remained there for ten weeks. It peaked at number eight on the Billboard Album chart. Isaac Hayes was off and running.

Then MGM appeared on the scene to talk about a new movie that was in works called Shaft. It had a black hero and MGM wanted black people to work on it. At first Isaac thought they wanted him to play the main character, Shaft, but that job went to Richard Roundtree. No, they wanted him to write the score for the movie. Isaac was a little disappointed but went to work and wrote the score. The title song was “Theme from Shaft.” The song won the Academy Award for Best Song for 1971 and was the first time an African American had won that award (or any non-acting award.) It was only the third time that a number one song on the Billboard charts also won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The other two were “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” by the Four Aces from 1955 and “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” by B.J. Thomas in 1970. In 2004, the song was ranked number 38 in the listing put out by AFI, called AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs, a survey of the top songs in American Cinema.

“Theme From Shaft” entered the pop charts on October 16, 1971 and five weeks later, it was number one where it stayed for two weeks. It was Isaac Hayes only number one song.