Isaac Hayes still puts his soul into his music

Who can forget the frenzied strings, the funky guitar licks and the horns from "The Theme from Shaft"? It's Isaac Hayes' best-known work, written and recorded for the 1971 film. The man who let everybody know that film hero John Shaft was a bad mother -- and won an Oscar for it in the process -- remains a soul man at age 65.

He's still recording, performing and undertaking film roles, despite suffering a stroke in 2006. His voice is a little halting at times, but he said the thought of giving up performing never crossed his mind. In fact, he expects to release a new album later this year.

"Music is my life, so I wasn't going to quit," Hayes said by phone from his home in Memphis, Tenn.

He has been working on the album in his home studio in between shooting a role as himself in the Samuel L. Jackson/Bernie Mac film "Soul Men" and playing a coroner in a new Steven Segal flick.

While controversy surrounded his 2006 departure as the voice of "Chef" on Comedy Central's "South Park," a gig he'd landed in 1997, Hayes said he would not rule out being part of another animated series. Perhaps it would be something his 2-year-old son -- and 12th child -- could watch. Hayes married his fourth wife, Adjowa, in 2005. She's a native of Ghana; Hayes was named an honorary king of its Ada region in 1992. Given land to construct a palace there, he built a school instead.

"They needed it," he said.

The interview took place before Hayes' recent performance with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. "I did a lot of arrangements, so it's good for me. It's good to do music with strings," he said. "I used to use strings all the time."

Reviewers of his shows note that while Hayes may move a little slower, the silky baritone and lush arrangements remain full. He saves the best for last: "Shaft."

Hayes said he wrote the song in three days after getting the assignment from Gordon Parks, the film's director and a renowned photographer.

The film was the first major studio production to be directed by an African-American (Parks), and Hayes was the first African-American composer to win an Oscar for Best Song.

In 2006, the rap group Three 6 Mafia took home an Academy Award for Best Song for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from "Hustle and Flow," a film in which Hayes had a small role. "It was good," he said of the winning song.

He should know. Hayes worked for Stax Records in the 1960s, and with writing partner David Porter penned some of the biggest hits for R&B stalwarts Sam and Dave for Stax: "You Don't Know Like I Know," "Hold On I'm Coming" and the Grammy-winning "Soul Man.

Of his days with Stax, he said, "We were like a big family."

Hayes also worked with Otis Redding, Booker T and the MGs, the Bar-Kays and Carla Thomas' father, Rufus Thomas, of "Funky Chicken" fame.

However, it was Hayes' work in front of the microphone that catapulted him to international fame. First came the release of his 1969 album, "Hot Buttered Soul." It featured his raps on extended versions of songs, such as the nine-minute "Walk on By" and the 18-minute "By the Time I Get to Phoenix."

With his bald head, low growl and shirt made out of chains, Hayes became a sex symbol who was nicknamed "the Black Moses."

In the mid-1970s, Stax's financial problems and Hayes' own economic woes led him to file for bankruptcy.

(E-mail Monica Haynes of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at mhaynes(at)post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)