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Shaft: Isaac Hayes' Revolutionary
Soundtrack
By Michael A.
Gonzales
Behind every great
music critic is an indulgent parent. You know, that long
suffering parental unit who didn’t scream when you
temporarily changed your forename to Vicious or Elton
(as I did in the fifth grade), didn’t curse you out when
you blasted reruns of The Partridge Family and treated
them as though they were real relatives — nor did they
have a heart attack when you wore your grandma’s wig
while pretending to be the Beatles.
In any case, it was my codependent mom who kept me
supplied with enough pop life-stimulants to get hooked
on spinning black vinyl forever. From bingeing on glossy
fan magazines (Tiger Beat, Right On!) to
overdosing on a prized 7” of Queen’s painfully beautiful
“Somebody to Love” and blaring the latest orchestrated
Gamble & Huff production, Mom made sure her baby boy had
his fix.
Still, no matter how many blunts have been passed over
the years, I’ll never forget that fall day in 1971 when
I was eight years old and my black wax supplier brought
me my first album: Isaac Hayes’s majestic
soundtrack for Shaft.
Even though I had not seen the movie, the lyrical
storyteller in Hayes brilliant single brought the
character to life for me. At the time, I had no idea
Isaac was a bad mother who had helped build the sonic
brick house of Stax Records in the Sixties. Along with
his then-writing partner David Porter, the duo composed
some 200 songs under the name the Soul Children. Reeling
off a string of hits for Stax luminaries like Sam & Dave
("Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Comin'"), Carla Thomas
("B-A-B-Y") and Johnnie Taylor ("I Got to Love
Somebody's Baby," "I Had a Dream"), these boys had the
Midas touch for gutbucket soul.
Indeed, my introduction to the musical magic of Isaac
Hayes was the hypnotic hi-hat intro and the watery
wah-wah guitar of the title track “Theme from Shaft.” A
funky overture that baptized the nation with the nectar
of muddy waters of Memphis, the song was played on a
zillion radio stations, hitting #1 on both the pop and
R&B charts. Still, no matter how many times the track
was pumped over the airwaves, I wasn’t content until it
was spinning on my own clunky stereo.
Though it might be hard to believe today, in the
post-civil rights era of 1971, there were no black super
heroes seen on screen. But once that badass black
private dick swung through the tenement windows of urban
American pop culture, we too had a champion to call our
own. Before the blaxploitation days of swaggering
sisters and mumbling macks, the boys in the ’hood had to
be content with pretending to be either Bond or Batman
(I don’t even want to think about the amount of times I
was forced to KA-POW! my little brother for refusing to
play Robin).
Shaft was directed by former Life magazine
photographer Gordon Parks, whose gritty pictorials of
rowdy Harlem street gangs and roguish Chicago detectives
proved he had the right eye to convey the hard rock
dynamics of the titular character. As the Negro link
between John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese, the
masterful Parks used the romantic decay of Seventies New
York City as the perfect character, and not merely a
backdrop.
Hearing Haye’s ultra-cool “Theme from Shaft” as actor
Richard Roundtree strutted past the B-movie marquees in
Times Square or the tense “Walk From Regio’s” as he
strolled through Greenwich Village was enough to make
this Manhattan-centric uptown boy drool with Big Apple
delight.
After Quincy Jones, who had constructed jazzy scores for
a handful of Sidney Lumet films (his exciting music from
The Anderson Tapes was a favorite), Isaac was
only the second black man to compose a major Hollywood
soundtrack.
“Having never written a score before, I was a little
nervous that I would mess up,” he admitted in a 1995
interview. Yet, in a record-breaking four days, holed-up
in a MGM recording studio with studio rats the Bar-Kays
and the Memphis Strings & Horns, brother Hayes created a
funky template that later inspired the soulful musings
of
Curtis Mayfield (Super
Fly),
Marvin Gaye (Trouble
Man),
James Brown (Black
Caesar) and
Willie Hutch (The
Mack). After
Shaft, black film soundtracks would never be the
same.
Still, not everyone was as thrilled by symphonic soul
and bawdy lyrics as I was — least of all my third grade
teacher, Miss Wilson. Attending a proper Negro private
academy called the Modern School, we were expected to be
perfect ladies and gentleman at all times. Needless to
say, this was easier for some than others.
Though the Modern School was in the heart of the ’hood,
it was the kind of classy joint where the teachers
played Mozart during lunch. I had once been forced to
prance on stage at the Audubon Ballroom (the same spot
where Malcolm X was slain) in black ballet slippers and
colorful balloons tied to wrists while the Fifth
Dimensions wailed “Up, Up and Away.” Forget about Martin
Luther King’s dream — this was his acid trip.
Every Friday afternoon our class was encouraged to bring
their own music to school to play for the other
students. Of course, I couldn’t wait to share the wicked
Shaft soundtrack with the class. Regally sitting at a
paper cluttered desk, Miss Wilson instructed me to walk
over to the antiquated stereo — I think the needle was
made of wood — and put on the disc.
Yet, once Isaac sang the songs raunchy (by ’71
standards) first line, “Who's the black private dick
that's a sex machine to all the chicks? (SHAFT!) Ya damn
right!” the fun was over. Clad in a quaint print dress
and an ill-fitting wig, light-skinned Miss Wilson leapt
from her paper-cluttered desk and sprinted across the
carpeted floor like Wilma Rudolph. “What kind of music
is this supposed to be?” she screamed, accidentally
scratching the needle across the wax. Cringing as Miss
Wilson ruined my record, I was stunned by her blushing
reaction.
Carelessly shoving the damaged record back into its
sleeve, Miss Wilson curtly dropped the album cover on my
desk. Having regained her buppie composure, she hovered
for a moment before screeching through clinched teeth.
“Please, don’t bring anything like this to class ever
again.”
The following year, at the 1972 Academy Awards, Isaac
Hayes’
revolutionary soundtrack won an Oscar for Best
Score.
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posted 25 October 2007 |
