Black Moses

Within the stoned soul picnic of Black music icons in the '60s and '70s, only one could bill himself without a blush as Moses, demanding liberation for Black men with his notions of life and self, Isaac Lee Hayes Jr...Hayes's stunning self-portraits, his obsessive pleas about love, sex, and guilt bathed in lush orchestral flights and soul-stirring bass lines, drove other soul men to libidinous license. While he thrived on soulful remakes of pop standards, his biggest coup was writing and producing the epic soundtrack to Shaft. This new musical and cultural coda delivered Hayes the first Oscar ever won by a Black musician, as well as the Grammy for Best Song. Acclaimed music biographer Mark Ribowsky, gallops through the many stages of Hayes's daring and daunting life. Ribowsky then takes readers through Hayes's rise at Memphis's legendary soul factory, Stax Records. He created crossover smashes, making soul a semi-religion of Black pride, imagination, and joyful emotion. Hayes's subsequent career as a solo artist featured studio methods and out-of-the-box ideas that paved the way for soul to occupy the top of the album charts. But his prime years ended prematurely. In the '90s he claimed he had finally found himself, as a minion of Scientology. This would cost him the gig that had revived him. He died in 2008 at age sixty-eight. His influence will last for as long as there is music to be heard. And when we hear him in that music, we will by rote say, "We can dig it."