With his gleaming shaven head, gold medallion and sunglasses, Isaac Hayes was a cartoonist's dream of what a certain type of soulman should look like. Yet Hayes, who died in Memphis on Sunday aged 65, was no joke. He played a pioneering role in the history of black pop, first as a songwriter and producer at one of pop's greatest record labels, Stax, then as the performer of early-1970s classics such as "Theme from 'Shaft' ". To his fans, the innovatory singer and composer was the "Black Moses" of soul.
Born in rural Tennessee in 1942, Hayes was raised in a tin shack by his sharecropper grandparents after his mother died and his father left home. As a teenager he moved to Memphis, where he made several doomed attempts to catch the ear of the city's principal record label, Stax.
