Maria Hayes Popular Books

Maria Hayes Biography & Facts

Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was an American singer, songwriter, composer, and actor. He was one of the creative forces behind the Southern soul music label Stax Records, serving as both an in-house songwriter and as a session musician and record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. Hayes and Porter were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of writing scores of songs for themselves, the duo Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, and others. In 2002, Hayes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."Soul Man", written by Hayes and Porter and first performed by Sam & Dave, was recognized as one of the most influential songs of the past 50 years by the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was also honored by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, by Rolling Stone magazine, and by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as one of the Songs of the Century. During the late 1960s, Hayes also began a career as a recording artist. He had several successful soul albums such as Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and Black Moses (1971). In addition to his work in popular music, Hayes worked as a composer of musical scores for motion pictures. Hayes was known for his musical score for the film Shaft (1971). For the "Theme from Shaft", he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1972, making him the third black person, after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier, to win an Academy Award in any competitive field covered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hayes also won two Grammy Awards for that same year. Later, he was given his third Grammy for his music album Black Moses. In 1992, Hayes was crowned honorary king of the Ada region of Ghana in recognition of his humanitarian work there. He acted in motion pictures and television, such as in the movies Truck Turner, Escape from New York and I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, and as Gandolf "Gandy" Fitch in the TV series The Rockford Files (1974–1980). Hayes also voiced the character Chef from the Comedy Central animated series South Park from its debut in 1997 until his controversial departure in 2006. On August 5, 2003, Hayes was honored as a BMI Icon at the 2003 BMI Urban Awards for his enduring influence on generations of music makers. Throughout his songwriting career, Hayes received five BMI R&B Awards, two BMI Pop Awards, two BMI Urban Awards and six Million-Air citations. As of 2008, his songs had generated more than 12 million performances. Early life Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was born in Covington, Tennessee, the second child of Eula (née Wade) and Isaac Hayes Sr. After his mother died young and his father abandoned his family, Hayes was raised by his maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Willie Wade Sr. The child of a sharecropper family, Hayes grew up working on farms in the Tennessee counties of Shelby and Tipton. At age five, Hayes began singing at his local church and he taught himself to play the piano, Hammond organ, flute, and saxophone.Hayes dropped out of high school, but his former teachers at Manassas High School in Memphis encouraged him to complete his diploma, which he did at the age of 21. After graduating from high school, Hayes was offered several music scholarships from colleges and universities. He turned down all of them to provide for his immediate family, working at a meat-packing plant in Memphis by day and playing nightclubs and juke joints several evenings a week in Memphis and nearby northern Mississippi. Hayes's first professional gigs, in the late 1950s, were as a singer at Curry's Club in North Memphis, backed by Ben Branch's houseband. Career 1963–1974: Stax Records and Shaft Hayes began his recording career in the early 1960s, as a session musician for acts recorded by the Memphis-based Stax Records. He later wrote a string of hit songs with songwriting partner David Porter, including "You Don't Know Like I Know", "Soul Man", "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby" and "Hold On, I'm Comin'" for Sam & Dave. Hayes, Porter and Stax studio band Booker T. & the M.G.'s were also the producers for Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas and other Stax artists during the mid-1960s. One of the first Stax records Hayes played on was "Winter Snow" by Booker T. and The M.G.s (Stax 45–236), which indicates "Introducing Isaac Hayes on piano" on the label. Hayes-Porter contributed to the Stax sound of this period, and Sam & Dave credited Hayes for helping develop both their sound and style. In 1968, Hayes released his debut album, Presenting Isaac Hayes, a jazzy, largely improvised effort that was commercially unsuccessful.Stax then went through a major upheaval, losing its biggest star when Otis Redding died in a plane crash in December 1967, and then losing its back catalog to Atlantic Records in May 1968. As a result, Stax executive vice president Al Bell called for 27 new albums to be completed in mid-1969; Hayes's second album, Hot Buttered Soul was the most successful of these releases.On Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes reinterpreted "Walk On By" (previously recorded by Dionne Warwick) into a 12-minute exploration. "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" starts with an eight-minute-long monologue before breaking into song, and the lone original number, the funky "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" runs nearly ten minutes, a significant break from the standard three-minute soul/pop songs. "Walk On By" would be the first of many times Hayes would take a Burt Bacharach standard, generally known as three-minute pop songs by Dionne Warwick or Dusty Springfield, and transform it into a soulful, lengthy and almost gospel number.In 1970, Hayes released two albums, The Isaac Hayes Movement and ...To Be Continued. The former stuck to the four-song template of his previous album. Jerry Butler's "I Stand Accused" begins with a trademark spoken word monologue, and Bacharach's "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" is re-worked. The latter album included "The Look of Love", another Bacharach song transformed into an 11-minute epic of lush orchestral rhythm (mid-way it breaks into a rhythm guitar jam for a couple of minutes before suddenly resuming the slow love song). An edited three-minute version was issued as a single. The album featured the instrumental "Ike's Mood," which segues into a version of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling". Hayes released a Christmas single, "The Mistletoe and Me" (with "Winter Snow" as a B-side).In early 1971, Hayes composed music for the soundtrack of the blaxploitation film Shaft (he appeared in a cameo role as a bartender). The title theme, with its wah-wah guitar and multi-layered symphonic arrangement, would become a worldwide hit single, and spent two weeks at number one in the Billboard Hot 100 in November. The remainder of the album was mostly instrumentals covering big beat jazz, bluesy funk, and hard Stax-styled soul. The other two vocal songs, the social commentary "Soulsville" and the 19-minu.... Discover the Maria Hayes popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Maria Hayes books.