Isaac Hayes

Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was born on 20 August 1942 in Covington, Tennessee, and was raised by his grandparents following his mother's death and father's departure, growing up in poverty and picking cotton as a child before developing musical talent that led him to Memphis's Stax Records, where he became a staff songwriter and producer during the 1960s.

Hayes co-wrote numerous significant hits for other Stax artists, including 'Soul Man' and 'Hold On, I'm Comin'' for Sam & Dave, before pursuing his own solo recording career, developing a distinctive musical style combining lush orchestration, extended song lengths and deep, resonant vocals that departed significantly from conventional soul music song structure.

In 1971 Hayes composed the score for the film Shaft, and 'Theme from Shaft' became a massive commercial hit, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1972, making Hayes the first Black composer to win an Academy Award in a non-acting category, a landmark breakthrough in film music history.

Hayes's Shaft soundtrack album also won two Grammy Awards and became hugely influential, helping establish the blaxploitation film genre's musical template and demonstrating that a Black composer's film score could achieve massive mainstream commercial and critical success, opening doors for subsequent Black composers in film scoring.

Hayes continued a substantial recording career throughout subsequent decades, and became known to a later generation of audiences through his voice role as Chef in the animated television series South Park (1997–2006), demonstrating a genuinely wide-ranging career spanning serious musical composition and popular culture voice acting.

Hayes died in 2008 from a stroke, and remains remembered as one of the most significant composers and musicians in the history of soul and film music, his Academy Award for 'Theme from Shaft' standing as a landmark breakthrough for Black composers in an industry category that had, to that point, remained essentially closed to them.