Isaac Hayes - Shaft: Music From The Soundtrack (1971 Film)
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Isaac HayesBrand: HAYES,ISAAC
Composer: Isaac Hayes
Composer: J.J. Johnson
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 1991-11-07
Music Label: Stax
Product features:
- HAYES ISAAC SHAFT
- Theme from Shaft [Vocal Version]
- Bumpy's Lament
- Walk from Regio's
- Ellie's Love Theme
- Shaft's Cab Ride
- Cafe Regio's
- Early Sunday Morning
- Be Yourself
- A Friend's Place
- Soulsville [Vocal Version]
- No Name Bar
- Bumpy's Blues
- Shaft Strikes Again
- Do Your Thing [Vocal Version]
- The End Theme
Free Music Notes for Shaft: Music From The Soundtrack (1971 Film)
Free Music Review: Farewell Black Moses
Hit: 5 Stars
After hearing the sad news that Isaac Hayes had passes away yesterday I decided to pay tribute to the man that re-wrote the rules for popular music by writing a review of his classic soundtrack to the blaxploitation flick "Shaft" from 1971 with Richard Roundtree in the lead. When people talk about blax flicks they talk about Shaft and when they talk about Shaft they talk about Hayes. But in order to understand Hayes legacy we need to go back to 1969 when he released his groundbreaking album Hot Buttered Soul. An album that only included 4 songs and 4 songs much longer then the average radio time of 3 minutes at the time, Infact the shortest song clocked at 5 minutes and the longest at 18!. 3/4 of those songs were also covers but unrecognizable to it's originals. Hayes and his band The Bar-Kays would have long spoken intros, instrumental parts of horns, strings, organs and guitars and a productions that would be influentual to the birth of Hip Hop one and a half decace later. Hayes had a very unique deep voice and would sometimes also rap and he was both sensual and charismatic and his original shaved head was not too common back in the day when everyone had an afro. An on top of that, Hayes would lead the way for Soul Music in the 70's and open the doors for other Soul musicians like Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder to break out of the fabricated motown influenced music of the 60's where musicians had no personal integrity and were all sounding the same. The irony behind this was that Hayes was a humble backround musician and he worked for the modest label Stax, after his debut album Presenting Isaac Hayes flopped he wasn't even suppost to release a successor.
Hayes released two more albums in 1970, The Isaac Hayes Movement and...To Be Continued before it was time for Shaft the year after. Originally Hayes had hoped to play the lead and to writeit's music, but when Roundtree was appointed as Shaft, Hayes accepted to play a smaller role and since the record company was impressed by the songs he had written thus far he was given green light to record the rest of the soundtrack. The result was groundbreaking. The lead track "Theme From Shaft" topped the Billboard singles chart for two weeks, The album peaked at #1 on the album charts and Hayes even won an oscar for best film music. After the major success of "Shaft" film music got a new importance and even to it's day big budget films always try to attract good musicians for it's soundtrack. it also attracted other artists such as Curtis Mayfield to record the soundtrack for Blax flicks like Superfly and Willie Hutch for Foxy Brown: Original Soundtrack From American International Pictures. Blax flicks became just as famous for their plot as for their music.
To try to sum up the songs of this album in the best possible way, you can say that they all are closely related to certain scenes of the film which make them quite memorable if you have seen the film. Most songs are instrumentals, excellent as soundtracks but not exactly single material, there are also many very short songs. On Mayfield's "Superfly" soundtrack there were more songs with vocals and therefore also more memorable moments since almost any song could have been picked as a single there. But let's not take away anything from Hayes, all of the songs are beautiful and they fit the diffrent scenes of the film well. Obviously the theme song stands out as nothing else here, partly cause it's amazing but also cause it became a synonym for an entire film genre. This brilliant piece is mostly instrumental but the few words that Hayes say are memorable enough "Who's the black private dick
That's a sex machine to all the chicks?" (Shaft!). The 20 minute jam of "Do Your Thing" which shows what Hayes is all about and the hauting and deeply realistic "Soulville" about povery, racism and segregation in USA. Out of the instrumentals, we need to mention the marimba of "Ellis Love Theme" the horns of "Be Yourself" and the electric piano of "Bumpy's Lament".
Well, "Shaft" in an exellent and highly influentual album in any way and if you call yourself a Soul fan you should own this. It demonstrates Hayes and The Bar-Kays at their peak of creativity and this is why he got introduced into the Rock N Roll Hall of fame in 2002. The same year as shaft he would also release his last great album Black Moses which finalized his creative peak. In latter years, he may be better known for Chef in Southpark and for being a spokesperson for the Scientology Church (read sect) but musically no one can take anything away from him. Rest In Peace Isaac Hayes 1942-2008.
Shaft: Music From The Soundtrack (1971 Film) Poster
Of the many wonderful blaxpoitation soundtracks to emerge during the early '70s, Shaft certainly deserves mention as not only one of the most lasting but also one of the most successful. Isaac Hayes was undoubtedly one of the era's most accomplished soul artists. With the Theme From Shaft, Hayes delivered an anthem just as ambitious and revered as the film itself, a song that has only grown more treasured over the years, after having been an enormously popular hit at the time of its release. Soulsville operates effectively as the sort of down-tempo ballad Hayes was most known for, just as the almost 20-minute Do Your Thing showcased just how impressive the Bar-Keys had become, stretching the song to unseen limits with their inventive, funky jamming. This CD features cinematic moments of instrumentation, composed and produced by Hayes while being performed by the Bar-Kays - some down-tempo, others quite jazzy. A Stax recordsThe "Theme from Shaft" is now so ingrained in popular consciousness as the blaxploitation-movie track that it's hard to listen to it without a faint smirk. ("Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?"!!) But if you can get past the inadvertent humor, it's still a devilishly exciting piece of music--all hi-hat 16ths, wah-wah guitar, strings, and woodwind, like a Norman Whitfield Motown production taken to a baroque extreme. The rest of the album consists mainly of incidental mood music of no great worth: "Walk from Regio's," "Ellie's Love Theme"--you know the sort of thing. Only two other tracks feature the Black Moses pipes, while the endless "Do Your Thing" takes its place in the catalog of Hayes epics that began with Hot Buttered Soul. --Barney Hoskyns
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