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SHAFT – Isaac Hayes
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In the 1960s and 1970s the larger than life screen detective genre flourished with stars such as Paul Newman in Harper), Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome, and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Producer Joel Freeman and MGM Studios sought to cash in on the genre and decided to adapt novelist Ernest Tidyman’s last book Shaft. It was decided that Tidyman and John D. F. Black would collaborate in writing the screenplay. Gordon Parks was given the reins to direct and he made a truly audacious move by casting the titular character with Richard Roundtree, a black former model and actor. In the novel, Shaft is white, and this bold move would ultimately prove transformative in the Hollywood film industry, unleashing the Blaxploitation film genre. Joining Roundtree would be Moses Gunn as Bumpy Jonas and Charles Cioffi as Lieutenant Vic Androzzi. Read more…
Isaac Hayes, 1942-2008
Composer, singer, songwriter, arranger and actor Isaac Hayes died in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 10, 2008, at the age of 65.
One of the defining figures of 1970s soul music, Hayes also made an indelible contribution to cinema through his groundbreaking score for Shaft, whose combination of funk, jazz, orchestral writing and rhythm-and-blues profoundly influenced the sound of American film music. He became the first African-American to win an Academy Award in a music category when “Theme from Shaft” won Best Original Song in 1972.
Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was born in Covington, Tennessee, on August 20, 1942, and grew up in the Memphis area. A multi-instrumentalist who played piano, organ and saxophone, he joined Stax Records during the early 1960s, initially as a session musician. With lyricist David Porter he became one of the label’s most successful songwriting teams, creating songs including “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby” and “Soul Man” for Sam & Dave. By the end of the decade Hayes had emerged as a recording star in his own right, with the landmark 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul establishing his distinctive mixture of extended song structures, deep vocals, psychedelic soul and elaborate orchestral arrangements.
His entry into film music came with Gordon Parks’s Shaft (1971), starring Richard Roundtree as private detective John Shaft. Hayes approached the project with the same musical freedom that characterized his solo albums, combining wah-wah guitar, driving hi-hat rhythms, brass, strings, jazz improvisation and lengthy instrumental grooves. Rather than merely providing conventional dramatic underscore, he created a complete musical environment for the film, giving its urban New York setting a confidence and contemporary energy rarely heard in mainstream Hollywood scoring at the time. Read more…
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